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ON BEHALF OK 



Clje ifir^t Cljurcl) in Ii3o0ton, 



RuFus Ellis, William F. Matchett, 

G. Washington Warren, Thomas Minns, 
George W. Wales, 

CommtttEE on fHcmattal Folume. 



THE COMMEMORATION 



FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON 

OF THE 

COMPLETION OF TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY 
YEARS SINCE ITS FOUNDATION, 




FIFTH HOUSE OF WORSHIP. 

CORNER OF BERKELEY AND MARLBOROUGH STREETS. 
1868. 



THE COMMEMORATION 

/ BY THE 

FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON 

OF THE 

Completion of 2r\ua Il:)unliret» anti Mft^ gears 

since its foundation. 
On Thursday, November i8, 1880. 

ALSO 

FOUR HISTORICAL SERMONS. 
5Bitl) EUujstrationjs. 



Printed by Order of the Society. 



BOSTON: 
HALL AND WHITING. 

1881. 



Copyright, 1881, 
By Rufus Ellis. 



University Press : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 



^rdiim'narg Proccclitngs. 

Page 

Committees Appointed xiii 

Participation in City Celebration xv 

Invitations and Arrangements xix 

l^iston'cal ^frmons. 

RuFus Ellis, D.D., preached Nov. 14, 1880 3 

„ „ „ „ „ 21, 1880 28 

„ „ „ „ „ 28, 18S0 49 

N. L. Frothingham, D.D., on ihe Two Hundredth 

Ant^iversarv 69 

CommEm0ratibe Scrfat'ccs. 

Address of Welcome hy Hon. Nathaniel Silsbee ... 92 

Prayer of Rufus Ellis, D.D 95 

Reading of Scripture by Joseph T. Durvka. D.D.. . . 96 

Address of George E. Ellis, D.D 98 

,, „ Hon, Robert C. \\'inihr()I' 113 

„ „ Governor Long 122 

„ ,, Mayor Princi: 125 

Poem iiy William Evereit, Ph.D 1.^2 

ADDRF.SS of President Eliot 136 

„ „ „ Noah Porier 142 



vi CONTENTS. 

Pace 

The Hundred and Seventh Psalm 150 

Address of Rev. Grindall Reynolds 151 

„ „ Phillips Brooks, D.D 156 

„ „ Prof. C. C. Everett, D.D 161 

„ „ Hon. Robert S. Rantoul 167 

„ G. W. Briggs, D.D. . 169 

Hymn by Rev. Charles T. Brooks 172 

The Seventy-eighth Psalm 174 

CorrESpontJfnce. 

From the President of the United States, Secretary of 

State, and Attorney-Gener.'Vl 177 

From Boston, England 178 

From Ministers of First Churches and others . . . 183 
From Commander Stevens and Captain Wyman of the 

Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company . . . 196 

^pp cull II. 

Church Covenant and Roll of Ministers 201 

Former Houses of Worship and Communion Plate . . 202 

Ushers on Commemoration Day 204 

Corner-stone Address by Rev. Rufus Ellis 204 

Description of Church and Chapel Windows .... 208 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Pace 

Present Church Frontispiece. 

Card of Iwitaiion xv 

PoRi'RAir OF Rfv. John Wilson i 

Chlrch in Chauncy Place 69 

The Old Brick Church 90 

PoRTR-AIT OF RfV. RuFUS ElLIS I 74 

„ „ Nathaniel Thavkr 199 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 



\ T the annual meeting of the Proprietors of the First 
-^^- Church in Boston, held April 15, 1879, G. WASH- 
INGTON Warren, Moderator, having suggested the pro- 
priety of taking early measures to prepare for a suitable 
celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
the foundation of the church, which would occur next year 
(1880), it was 

Voted, " That the Standing Committee of the Parish, with 
the Pastor and Deacons of the Church, be appointed a 
committee to consider and report at the next annual 
meeting, what day shall be selected and what arrangements 
shall be made for the observance of the two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary." 

The officers of the Parish and of the Church had several 
meetings, at which the minister was present by their invi- 
tation. The result of their deliberations was embodied in 
the following Report, Avhich was presented at the annual 
meeting of the Parish held on the third Tuesday of April 
(20th), 1880, and unanimousl)' adopted. 

REPORT. 

The Committee appointed to consider and report what 
measures should be ado})ted for the due observance of the 
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of 



Xll FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

the First Church in Boston, and what day should be desig- 
nated therefor, respectfully report: — 

They find that already considerable interest has been 
awakened on the subject, and that a general feeling is 
manifested in favor of a suitable commemoration. They 
propose that Thursday, the 28th day of October next, be 
selected for the services, that being about the time, as 
nearly as can now be ascertained, when the church came 
over from Charlestown to worship in Boston in 1630. 
They also recommend that all the arrangements for the 
commemoration be put in charge of a committee of twelve, 
as at least four sub-committees will be required to carry 
out all the details, as invitations and speaking, decoration 
and music, entertainment and finance. 

It has also been suggested that an historiographer be 
appointed who shall collect and prepare for publication 
the materials for a memorial of this eventful period in the 
history of the church. It is understood that the First 
Church will be invited also to participate in some way in 
the Municipal Celebration of the 17th of September, and 
that on the Sunday preceding the 28th October, our pastor 
will deliver a Commemorative Discourse. 

The Committee recommend the adoption of the accom- 
panying vote. 

Per order of the Committee, 

G. Washington Warren. 

Voted, "That a Committee of Twelve be appointed from 
the Parish, who shall make all the arrangements necessary 
for the proper celebration, on Thursday, the 28th day of 
October next, of the completion of two hundred and fifty 
years since the foundation of the First Church in Boston; 
and that they also cause to be prepared a suitable memo- 
rial volume, containing the addresses and incidents of the 
celebration, and such other historic matter connected with 
the Church as may be deemed appropriate." 



PRELIMINARY PROCKEUIXGS. XIH 

The Committee of Twelve were then appointed as 
follows : — 

Nathaniel Thayer. James C. White. 

G. Washington Warren. Asa P. Potter. 

George W. Wales. Joseph B. Moors. 

Mrs. George O. Shattuck. Thomas Minns. 

Mrs. George S. Hale. William F. Matchett. 

Miss Gertrude Ellis. Thomas O. Richardson. 

And to this Committee the minister was added. 

The Committee was soon organized, and held frequent 
meetings. It became apparent that, for various reasons, 
the commemoration should be postponed to a later day 
than that first decided upon. 

On June 19th the following Report was made at a Special 
Meeting of the Proprietors, called for that purpose, by 
Thomas O. Richardson, on behalf of the Committee : — 

SFXOND REPORT. 

That the Committee duly organized by the choice of 
N.\TiiANiEL Thayer as President, George \V. Wales as 
Vice-President, Tiiomas O. Richardson as Secretary. 
The vacancies caused by the declination of Mrs. Georc;e 
S. Hale and Mrs. George O. Shattuck were filled by 
the choice of Hon. GEORGE S. Hale and Mrs. J.\COB C. 
Rogers, who have accepted the positions, and the Com- 
mittee is now full. 

Before the Committee had proceeded far in perfecting 
their plans for the celebration, it was obser\'ed that the 
day fi.xed upon for the celebration, Thursda)'. the 28th day 
of October, was just on the eve of the Presidential election, 
which ma\^ prove to be a time of great political excitement, 
and it was thought best by the Committee to ask the Society 
to pass a vote authorizing the Committee to fi.x some other 
day for the celebration. 

It was also mentioned b\' those members of the Com- 



xiv FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

mittee most familiar witli the history of the past, that the 
Society formed in Charlestown, Aug. 27, 1630, was not 
fully removed to and established in Boston till November 
of that year, and if the day of the celebration was now to 
be fixed for the first time, November would be a more 
appropriate month than October. 

It was further learned that some whom it would be 
very desirable to have take part in the celebration have 
such engagements in other cities that their presence could 
not be expected till November. 

Thomas O. Richardson, Secretary. 

Whereupon it was unanimously 

Voted, " That the Committee on the celebration of the 
completion of two hundred and fifty years since the foun- 
dation of the First Church in Boston have authority, if 
they deem it expedient, to fix some other day than Thurs- 
day, Oct. 28, 1880, for that celebration." 

Under the authority of this vote, the Committee fixed 
upon Thursday, November i8th, at two o'clock, p.m., as 
the time for the commemoration. The following sub- 
committees were appointed, who were to report their 
recommendations to the General Committee for their ap- 
proval : — 

On Speakers and Order of Exercises. 

Nathaniel Thayer. Joseph B. Moors. 

RuFus Ellis. George S. Hale. 

George W. Wales. Thomas O. Richardson. 

On Music and Decorations. 
James C. White. Miss Gertrude S. Ellis. 

William F. Matchett. Mrs. J. C. Rogers. 

Thomas Minns. 

On Invitations, Circulars, Tickets, and Printing. 

G. Washington Warren. Thomas Minns. 
Thomas O. Richardson. 



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PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. xv 

On JFinancc. 
Joseph B. Moors. William F. Matciiett. 

Asa p. Potter. 

On Memorial Volume. 

RuFus Ellis. William F. Matchett. 

G. Washington Warren. Thomas Minns. 

George W. Wales. 

In addition to the sub-committccs, G. WASHINGTON 
Warren and George S. Hale were appointed a com- 
mittee to confer with the authorities of the City of Boston, 
as to the participation of the First Church in Boston in 
the city celebration of its two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary, to be held on September 17, 1880. In the con- 
ferences which this committee had with His Honor the 
Mayor and the Celebration Committee on the part of the 
city, it was determined that the minister of the First 
Church should be the chaplain of the day; that its com- 
mittee should be represented in the city procession, and 
also at the festival to be held in Faneuil Hall on the even- 
ing of September 16. 

In pursuance of this arrangement, G. WASHINGTON 
Warren was called upon by his Honor the Ma}-or to 
respond on behalf of the First Church, at the festival in 
Faneuil Hall, which he did in the followin<j manner: — 

address of HON. G. WASHINGTON WARREN AT 
THE FANEUIL HALL RECEPTION. 

Mr. Mayor, — In respondini^ to the call to speak in 
behalf of the First Church in Boston, I may sa\- that, like 
that church and like this t^ood town of Boston, I had my 
origin in Charlestown. I was born, sir, within a stone's- 
throw of the spot where the first Court of Assistants was 
held, and where Governor John W'inthrop for the first time 
on the soil of Massachusetts unrolled the charter which he 



Xvi FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

brought over from England. It always has seemed to me 
that a statue of Winthrop holding the invaluable charter 
ought to be erected upon that spot; or, at least, some 
memorial should be placed there to distinguish that great 
historic event. 

Before forming a town, however, and before taking 
measures to constitute a commonwealth, the first thing 
which Winthrop and his associates did was to form a 
church, — showing that the chief object which they had in 
mind, and what they came here under so many privations 
to. secure, was the free, unmolested worship of God, ac- 
cording to the dictates of their own consciences. And 
this first work which they did has lasted to this day. The 
First Church has now precisely the same form of covenant, 
in precisely the same words, which was framed and signed 
by Winthrop, by Isaac Johnson, — the husband of the 
Lady Arbella, — by Deputy-Governor Dudley, by John 
Wilson, the first minister, and the others. This was on 
July 30, 1630. The first Court of Assistants was held on 
the 23d of August following, at which the first thing deter- 
mined upon was how the ministers should be maintained. 
This was fifteen days before Boston was named. 

The difference between the first house of worship erected 
by Winthrop and his associates, the low, mud-plastered 
building at the corner of State and Devonshire streets, and 
the tasteful temple which their successors now hold, at the 
corner of Berkeley and Marlborough streets, marks, as 
well as any other illustration which can be given, the ad- 
vance which these two hundred and fifty years have brought 
about. But the most interesting memorial we have in our 
present elegant architectural church edifice is the original 
church covenant, inscribed on one of the stained-glass 
windows. By this we testify that, whatever change and 
progress may be brought about by prosperity in material 
things, there need be no change in the expression of Chris- 
tian fellowship. Governor Winthrop, we are told, often, in 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. xvii 

the absence of his minister, exhorted in the church. And 
this grace, or at least the facuhy of exhibiting it, has been 
shared by his successors in office. 

We of the First Church in Boston cheerfully co-operate 
with }'ou, sir, and the other fathers of the city, in seeking 
to pay honor to the memory of John Winthrop, your 
founder and our founder. No character, during the cen- 
turies of modern history, is more illustrious for those pecu- 
liarly combined qualities of persistency and resignation, of 
courage and meekness, of firmness and conciliation, which 
he exhibited in the accomplishment of his great work, — 
the founding of a Christian commonwealth. Moses, in 
leading the Israelites through the wilderness, did not show 
greater faith and courage than did Winthrop when he 
pioneered his fleet of ten ships to these inhospitable shores. 
Whatever good influence Massachusetts has exerted, what 
she is and what she has been, may be traced back to the 
good seed which he brought with him and planted here. 

Mr. Mayor, the motto on our city seal — Siciit patribiis, 
sit Dais nobis — is an official acknowledgment of the provi- 
dence of God, and a perpetual prayer for its continuance. 
This is the lesson of the hour. As long as in church and 
in school and in daily life the providence of God is de- 
voutly recognized, we need fear no evil. 

By a felicitous arrangement, the Commemoration Ser- 
vices on the part of the city, on September i/th, were 
held in the Old South Meeting-house, so closely asso- 
ciated with many of the great historic events which trans- 
pired in Boston during its last century and a half; and, in 
order to prevent any delay or confusion, they were ap- 
pointed to be held at nine o'clock in the forenoon, before 
the splendid pageant of the procession. This, although a 
novel, was a very judicious and appropriate course of 
proceeding on the part of the city, and is worthy of imita- 
tion in the future. 



xviii FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

As the minister of the First Church was spending his 
vacation abroad at this time, his place as chaplain of the 
day was supplied, at his request, by his brother Rev. 
George E. Ellis, D.D., of Boston, formerly minister of 
the Harvard Church in the Charlestown District of the 
city, but at this time a parishioner of the First Church, 
which he most acceptably represented on this interesting 
occasion. 

In the oration delivered by His Honor Fredekick O. 
Prince, the Mayor, the following appropriate reference 
was made to the historic connection of the First Church 
with the old town of Boston, closing with a just tribute to 
its present minister: — 

" Among the first acts of the colonists upon their arrival 
in New England was the formation of a church. The cove- 
nant was signed July 30, 1630, and this was the foundation 
of the First Church of Boston. The meetings of the con- 
gregation were originally held under the shade of an oak- 
tree, literally a house not made with hands. The first 
meeting-house was built in 1632, and was said to have had 
mud walls and a thatched roof. It was located in State 
Street, where Brazer's Building now stands. In 1639 a 
new house was built on the site in Washington Street, now 
occupied by Joy's Building. The cost was paid by the 
weekly church collections. This fact is interesting as show- 
ing that thus early the people of Boston initiated the policy 
of supporting religion by voluntary contributions, without 
recourse to rates or taxation bylaw. In 1711 the house 
was destroyed by fire and rebuilt. In 1808 the society 
removed to a new meeting-house on Chauncy Street, 
where it remained until 1868, when it removed to the 
beautiful church on Berkeley Street, where, under the 
charge of its present excellent pastor, it is successfully 
performing its Christian work. Esto pcrpctua ! '' 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. xix 

In the procession whi"ch followed and constituted the 
great public demonstration of the day, the First Church 
was represented by the acting chaplain and a part of the 
Committee, in the carriages with the other invited guests. 

The foregoing brief account of the participation of " the 
First Church in Boston " in the late imposing celebration 
of the city is here included, not only for the reason that 
the elegant edition of the Memorial Volume published by 
the city is already exhausted, but also because it seemed 
to fall within the province of the Committee, as indicated in 
the first Report to the Parish, to make arrangements for 
uniting in some way with the city authorities, and to put 
upon their own record, as well, the results of their doings. 
It will be seen that the close connection between the old 
church and the old town of Boston was duly recognized in 
both celebrations of their common jubilee. 

During the absence of the minister in Europe, Mr. 
Arthur B. Ellis attended, by invitation, the general 
meetings of the Committee. 

Invitatfons to the celebration of the First Church were 
extended to the ministers of churches formed in Massa- 
chusetts before 1650, to the churches formed directly from 
the First Church, to various ministers and bishops, Ro- 
manist and Protestant, of all the different denominations ; 
to the President of the United States, the Governor of 
Massachusetts, the Mayor of Boston ; to many other prom- 
inent citizens, and to the Vicar of St. Botolph, and others, 
of Boston, ICngland. Admission to the floor of the church 
was by ticket only ; the gallery was thrown open to the 
public. The half of the floor north of the broad aisle was 
reserved for invited guests, the other half for the members 
of the society and their friends. The arrangements were 
so complete, and were so well carried out by the Com- 
mittee and the ushers in attendance, and the services of the 
pulpit and the choir, the public addresses and the poem, 



XX FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

were all so excellent, so elevated and catholic in spirit, 
that the occasion will be remembered as a fit observance 
of one of the most interesting anniversaries connected with 
the history of Boston and of Massachusetts. 

Simultaneously with these proceedings, Mr. ARTHUR 
B. Ellis, son of the minister, was busily engaged in 
collecting materials for a complete history of the First 
Church in Boston ; and having received sufificient encour- 
agement, he announced his intention to prepare and pub- 
lish the work on his own responsibility. Rev. GEORGE 
E. Ellis will assist him in the revision, and will write 
the Preface. The Committee, therefore, took no steps 
towards the appointment of an historiographer, as con- 
templated in the Report of the Standing Committee and 
Deacons above-mentioned, and they have omitted in this 
volume much matter which would otherwise have been in- 
serted. The work of Mr. Ellis will be published in a 
style similar to this volume, and may be deemed a com- 
panion to it. The two together may serve the important 
purpose of perpetuating a worthy record of the most in- 
teresting events in the history of this ancient church, and 
of the late most successful and satisfactory Commemo- 
ration. 

The Committee on the Memorial Volume, having been 
intrusted with the preparation of this work, have caused it 
to be illustrated by the views of the two former houses of 
worship and of the present church edifice ; and also by 
photographs of the first and of the present minister, and 
of Mr. Nathaniel Thayer, one of the descendants of 
Rev, John Cotton, and one who for many years was 
Chairman of the Standing Committee, and whose counsel 
and valuable aid have always been liberally bestowed. 




laeoi "nota «uen i "owtt 



^ogj^'VOv^fi'^ 



HISTORICAL SERMONS 



ON THE OCCASION OF THE 



^boo llnmtirrii anti jFiftictl) ^nnibrrsaru 



First Church of Christ in Boston 



P,Y REV. RUFUS ELLIS, D.D. 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 



I. 



'• For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose 

BUILDER AND MAKER IS GOD." — //tA xi. lO. 

ON Thursday of this week we hope to commem- 
orate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary 
of the foundation of this church; but I must not 
fail to say that the 30th of July, Old Style, or the 
9th of August, New Style, and not the 18th of No- 
vember, was the birthday of our religious congrega- 
tion. We can plead as apologies for our delay only 
those habits of modern life, even in our Northern 
city, which make a midsummer gathering all but 
impossible, and the fact that until the autumn of the 
year 1630 the Sunday worship of First Church was 
divided between Charlestown and Boston, and this 
church had not become the First Church of Christ 
in Boston. Our last Half-Century Sermon was 
preached by my predecessor in this ministry, on the 
29th of August, 1S30; after the time, because, per- 
haps, the summers were already unfavorable to the 
assembling of city congregations. You might ask 
me to bring up the story of our church fcM" the last 



4 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTOxN. 

fifty years ; but this has already been done, — partly 
when Dr. Frothingham took leave of you as your 
minister, and partly by myself as we have passed 
from one house of worship to another, or have come 
to one and another stage of our journeying together. 
And so I am rather moved to go back to the begin- 
ning, and from the beginning to advance a little 
way forward through the years when this churcli 
and this town were one, and the congregation not 
only the First, but the only church of the infant 
I/' community, — that is, from July 30, 1630, to June 5, 
1650, at which time the Second Church was gath- 
ered, — a very stirring period in the lives of the Old 
and of the New England, — lives which were indeed 
far more than now one life, though Old and New 
were then weeks or months- apart, and not, as now, 
only moments. 

On that midsummer day, which we recall as our 
birthday, four Englishmen came together for a most 
solemn act, in a spot on the north side of Charles 
River, which the natives called Mishawam, and which 
had already got the name of Charleton or Charles- 
town. All of them leaders, one of them, John Win- 
throp, who is richly entitled to be first named, was 
the leader of some thousand men and women, who 
crossed, between the spring and winter of 1630, from 
England to the Bay of Massachusetts. Of these, 
one hundred and fifty, under Winthrop's guidance, 
had found their way to the banks of the Mystic and 
the Charles, the germs of a new commonwealth in 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 5 

their minds and hearts. They were loyal subjects 
of England's king, and, in their free fashion, loving 
children of England's Church ; but in the State and 
in the Church they had found themselves straitened 
in the dear old home. Conforming as far as they 
honestly could to the ancient order, they still longed 
for a larger liberty, and a ministry more according 
to the Spirit as it moved upon their hearts. In many 
instances thev had found much induls^ence from 
church authorities. John Cotton makes a very ten- 
der acknowledgment of this allowance in a touching 
letter to the Bishop of Lincoln. Indeed, not a little 
of the Christian freedom, which was afterward ruled 
out, and necessarily organized as Dissent, was in that 
day enjoyed within the limits of the English Church. 
Nevertheless, our fathers and mothers in this con- 
gregation, much as they loved the old religious home, 
were no longer quite at home in it. It was not 
enough for them to join in its common prayer and 
to be members of its multitudinous Church, and to 
live to2:ether in no closer relio^ious communion than 
it provided in the order of its Christian year and in 
its beautiful ceremonial. For more than all else to 
them was their relio^ion, — not one of manv realities, 
but the one reality of their life, — and they must 
build it into home and city. So these men and 
women were in the wilderness, — a worn, enfeebled, 
and, with all their earnestness and singleness of pur- 
pose, a much depressed, though not disheartened 
company. It was their day of trial, and to their 



6 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

faith it was the very time for entering into the closest 
religious communion, that they might be strong and 
patient together. It had been their way in the old 
country, so far as it was permitted, to supplement 
the usual and obligatory ministries and observances 
of the national Church by a kind of congregation 
within the congregation, — a company of men and 
women, covenanting each with the other, and all 
with the Invisible Head, to live by the divine grace 
and in all mutual love and fidelity. There was such 
a company in the great Church of St. Botolph in 
Old Boston, England, with which some of these im- 
migrants had been connected. Sunday afternoons 
and on week-days, — notably on Thursdays, — these 
congregations listened to lectures and joined in free 
prayer, under the spiritual leadership of ministers, 
some of whom still served in the English Church, 
while others had overtaxed the patience of their 
bishops, and had been silenced for non-conformity 
with the ceremonies, which seemed to these earnest 
Protestants inseparably associated with the corrup- 
tions of Rome. Gradually these congregations be- 
came the realities of the living present ; the old 
ritual was positively an offence to their fervid spir- 
its ; the Church was again the two or three met 
together in the name of Jesus; and when they 
found the ocean between them and their old home, 
and were removed forever from the old places of 
prayer, with their tender associations, and were no 
longer under any temptations or obligations to con- 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 7 

form, — it was inevitable that the new communion 
should come into the place of the old, and an ex- 
treme simplicity supplant an extreme formalism. It 
is interesting to note how careful they wqre, for a 
time at least, not to discredit, or in any way dispar- 
age, the Church which they seemed to have out- 
grown ; and yet, none the less, it dropped away from 
them as the husk from the ripe fruit, and, as time 
went on, became to their fervid spirits a hinderance 
and a stumbling-block. 

So, as when Judaism became the simplicity of 
Christ, they passed gradually and half-consciously 
from ecclesiastical Christianity into a pure Congre- 
gationalism or independency, almost without priest 
and ritual ; and, in our Bay of Massachusetts, four 
chief men of the little company of emigrants came 
together to prepare the way and make the beginning 
of what they call a congregation or church, under 
Christ their head, Christ the Invisible, mediated and 
represented by no hierarchy. Four English gentle- 
men, one of them an ordained and highly connected 
minister in the English Church, moved to prompt 
action by the stress of the times, invited their fellow- 
Christians of Salem and Plymouth to keep the 30th 
of July (it was a Friday) as a fast; and on that day 
they prepared and subscribed the covenant of this 
church as it stands forth upon one of our church 
windows to-day. Following the signature of John 
Winthrop, we read the names of Thomas Dudley, 
Isaac Johnson, and Rev. John Wilson. 



8 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

John Winthrop came of good English stock, and 
was born in Groton, Suffolk County, in 1587, now 
forty-three years of age, religious and wise, gentle 
and steadfast, more than abreast of his time, — a 
man in whom Church and State might well be at 
one ; a governor whose name stands at the head of 
the covenanted company, not for a form or a show, 
but because he was indeed the head and front of 
the fellowship. He lives still in some exquisite 
letters, as well as in his sensible and careful record 
of the experiences of the young colony, and most 
of all in the State in which his best life was forever 
embodied ; and it was most happy that a common- 
wealth so dominated by theologians was governed 
by a statesman like Winthrop, who could be at 
once a theologian and a man of large political wis- 
dom, common-sense, and sweet humanity. It is 
recorded of him that, when a preacher could not be 
found, he " exercised in the way of prophesying," 
that is, he preached ; and one cannot help wishing 
that some of those lay sermons had been taken down, 
especially as the pulpit literature of the time and 
place are not for us very interesting or edifying. 

By the side of Winthrop stands Thomas Dudley, 
born in Northampton, England, in the year 1576, — 
a man of a sincere temper and earnest, honest pur- 
pose, as we cannot doubt, but somewhat querulous 
and exacting, and quite as ready to insist upon his 
rights as to discharge his duties, nevertheless hon- 
orable and honored, if not so lovable as our admira- 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 9 

ble first governor. He had served Queen Elizabeth 
of England as a captain of English soldiers in the 
French army under Henry IV., and had been the 
faithful steward of the Earl of Lincoln. Isaac John- 
son comes next, — " a prime man amongst us, having 
the best estate of any, zealous for religion, and the 
greatest furtherer of this plantation," but a man fast 
passing into the shadow of sickness and death, first 
of his wife, the Lady Arbella, daughter of the Earl 
of Lincoln, and soon after his own. " Dead since " 
was presently written over his name as it stands 
under the covenant ; and, as Dudley tells us, " he 
made a most godly end, dying willingly, professing 
his life better spent in promoting this plantation 
than it could have been any other way. He left us 
a loss greater than the most conceived." 

The fourth signer is Rev. John Wilson, born in 
1588. His father had been chaplain to the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, canon of Windsor, prebendary 
of Rochester, and rector of Cliffe in Kent ; and in 
the Chapel of St. George, at Windsor, there was, 
until 1 789, a gravestone, a brass upon which marked 
the place of his burial by the figure of a man, and 
these fitting inscriptions: "To me to live is Christ, 
and to die is gain," and "Who thinks of death in 
life can never die." John Wilson had i)reached in 
Sudburv, in Suffolk, some eifrht or nine vears. He 
does not write his name first. It is not his church. 
He claims no precedence as a clergyman, though 
he prized his orders. He is one of the brethren and 



lO FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

a member of the congregation with the rest. I con- 
fess that I am greatly drawn to him, as to one who 
was not given to much self-assertion, and might easily 
have made for himself a greater name than has been 
granted him. He had been sorely harassed in Eng- 
land for non-conformity, and came to this country 
for freedom and peace. The first religious teacher 
of the church, and then associated with the teacher 
as pastor, he shared and survived the services of 
two other ministers, — according to my poor judg- 
ment, a wiser and better balanced man, as I cannot 
help saying, than the famous John Cotton, and, 
measured by the standard of his time, of much mod- 
eration and gentleness. If his sermons, save here 
and there one, have not survived him, they can 
hardly have been less interesting than those of his 
great colleague, whose expository discourses the 
antiquarian still tries to read, not without a feeling 
of gratitude that he did not yield to the urgency of 
Hueh Peters and the rest, and devote himself exclu- 
sively to what they called " raising marginal notes 
upon Scripture." So much of John Wilson, who 
came over with the first company, leaving an un- 
willing wife, who remained behind until 1635, — " I 
marvel," wrote Margaret Winthrop, "what mettle 
she is made of," — the first teacher as well as pastor 
of our church, very tender toward the old ways as 
well as forward-looking and forward-moving, and, 
as we shall perhaps see by and by, a good, sensible 
politician in the best sense of that abused word, and 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. II 

able to stand between Winthrop and a fanatical 
crowd in a day of trial for the infant common- 
wealth. 

It has been my privilege during the past summer 
to spend a few days in that part of England which 
was the home of these founders before they crossed 
the ocean. In the shires of Suffolk, Lincoln, Rut- 
land, Northampton, Derby, you will find the places 
that knew them while their feet pressed English 
soil. I have stood under Winthrop's mulberry-tree 
in Groton, and traced the fair record of his baptism 
in the church of that parish which the generous 
bounty of that good man's descendants in this 
country is restoring and beautifying. I have been 
hospitably entertained by the family of Johnson, 
whose Isaac, know^n as the Puritan, came to this 
new world with his fair wife, the Earl's daughter, 
only to share with her its sicknesses and its death ; 
and I learned that the Johnsons are still lords of 
the manor as of old in Rutland, presiding over 
the noble charities of the Archdeacon, the grand- 
father of our founder, patrons of famous parishes 
and schools, as in the lovely towns of Oakham and 
Uppingham, with their beautiful old churches and 
castles. I have visited with great interest the larger 
of these schools, and have tarried in Boston, as ten 
years ago, to visit St. Botolph s cathedral-like pile, 
and stand by John Cotton's pulpit; our Unitarian 
friends in that city extending the warmest hospi- 
talitv, and sendins^: to vou kindest c:reetinG;s for vour 



12 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

two hundred and fiftieth year of church life. I have 
passed through Sudbury, where Wilson preached 
several years, and through Northampton and Derby, 
the birthplaces of Dudley and Cotton ; and even in 
our changing world it has been easy to see from 
how much that was binding, stately, and seductive 
they went forth in obedience to heavenly visions. 
They left a world which most men would have pro- 
nounced very good, to make another world which, 
to their faith, hope, and charity, was unspeakably 
better. Even in dear Old England they could not 
do God's work as he would have it done. I do not 
wonder that they clung to the old altars and the old 
observances as long as they could. It was the bond 
of life -long custom and usage, the dear habit of 
childhood, and not constraint and calculation, which 
made them at least partial conformists so long as 
they were on English soil and within sight of the 
old parish churches ; and they had scarcely the heart 
to rear any chapels of dissent by their side. They 
must cross the sea for this, and they could do so 
only with a sad intensity. It was a day of faith, the 
golden age of English piety. It was not good for 
EnQ:land that she could not bear with them. She 
needs to-day, and in this very hour, the life that 
made the New England out of the Old, and that 
passed so lavishly into this church of our fathers, as 
into so many other foundations upon which so many 
generations have builded. 

We find, then, in this meeting of these four 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 1 3 

fathers of the Massacliusetts Colony at Charlestown, 
the fountain and origin of our church Hfe ; and it 
was undoubtedly the purpose and the hope of these 
fathers and their associates that this church life 
should be at once the mind and the heart, the in- 
most source out of which should be the issues of all 
other living, — in the home, the market-place, and 
the commonwealth. The congregation was to in- 
spire and guide, to supply voters, to call offenders 
to account, to advise magistrates, to pervade and 
occupy and possess all things, — the society of soci- 
eties, seeking in all faith to be a kingdom of God. 
Of course there were difficulties in such an enter- 
prise, which all too quickly came to light. These 
congregations were already not one, but many, each 
with its own mind, and that a very decided mind. 
Besides, from the very beginning, there were some 
honest men and women who were not yet ready to 
join any of the congregations and so qualify them- 
selves to be voters ; and what if the ministers should 
be of one opinion and the rulers of another.^ But 
as yet it did not appear whereunto all this would 
grow, or how difficult it would be to maintain church 
sujDremacy or in any way to blend Church and State 
in a Christian commonwealth. 

On the first Lord's Day after this memorable 
Friday, five more names were written under the 
covenant, and so on, week by week, until they are 
sixty-four men and thirty-two women. The cove- 
nant and the siirnin*'- are alike set down in our 



14 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

church records for the 27th of August, probably 
because this date marks a certain completing of the 
enrolment and a formal organization of the church 
in simple congregational fashion by the choice of 
Wilson as teacher, Nowell as elder, Gager and 
Aspinwall as deacons, — we of the congregation 
chose them ; and upon each and the other were laid 
ordaining hands, Mr. Wilson, the teacher, distinctly 
declaring that he meant to put no slight upon his 
orders in the Church of England. The little con- 
gregation had no need to fashion any ritual. They 
found it only too delicious to pray as the Spirit 
gave them utterance. They will not have even the 
Bible read in the course of their worship, unless it 
is expounded, and the truths brought into the 
light by the divine blessing upon a living ministry. 
They will have none of what they called "dumb 
reading." 

What were styled " conceived," or, as we say, ex- 
tempore, prayers had been allowed them in their 
old church only grudgingly and in very stinted 
measure. Here there shall be no other prayers, not 
though it were the Lord's Prayer, which had been 
so misused as a pater 7ioster?ind by vain repetitions. 
They would share no white surplice with Romish 
priests, but would minister in the scholar's black 
gown of Geneva. It seemed to them a mere formal- 
ity, and too much like the genuflections of the old 
superstition, to bow the head at the name of Jesus, 
though none could exceed them in their reverence 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. I5 

for that Holy One. Like the early disciples, they 
would gather about the sacramental table rather than 
kneel about the altar, lest haply men should say, 
" they worship the bread and the wine." They will 
have no funeral prayers, but will bear their dead to 
the last resting-place and lay them away in touching 
silence, lest they should be thought to pray for the 
departed spirit, and say masses in the ancient man- 
ner. They will not only lay aside the marriage ring 
as heathenish, but, by a strange revulsion, they will 
have marriage a civil service to be performed, not 
by the minister, but by a magistrate. They cannot 
quite refuse to sing ; but there shall be no instru- 
ment sa\'e the human voice, and such rough psal- 
mody as was supplied to the Puritans of Amsterdam 
by Henry Ainsworth; their tunes, some ten in num- 
ber, oftenest York, Hackney, Windsor, St. Mary, and 
St. Martyn's. 

Thus organized, the congregation entered upon 
an autumn of fair, open weather, with gentle frosts, 
followed by an early and very severe, but not j3ro- 
tracted winter. From the first the settlers steadily 
gravitate to our peninsula, invited and welcomed by 
the hospitable Blaxton, who, though clerical himself, 
soon found the ecclesiastical element among his 
guests excessive, and struck out anew into the wil- 
derness, where he could be quit of ministers as well 
as of bishops. Tliere was as yet no house of wor- 
ship. The great house at Charlestown, in fine 
weather a widely sj)reading tree, and sometimes one 



r6 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

of the few dwellings, served for a meeting-place. 
Modest shelters — cabins, I suppose, we should call 
them — were gradually springing up within the com- 
pass of some two miles of dry land, what seemed at 
high water two islands ; but it was a time of sick- 
ness, struggle, suffering from extreme scarcity of 
food, and much depression. Shell-fish had to serve 
for meat, ground-nuts and acorns for bread. Deacon 
Gamer's term of service had been of the briefest. 
He died on the ist of September, — "a godly man," 
they said, " and a skillful chirurgeon." On the last 
day of the same month, Isaac Johnson followed the 
same way. The Lady Arbella had died a month be- 
fore at Salem. Her burial-place was said to be near 
Bridge Street, Salem, as you go to Beverly. The 
earthly remains of her husband were laid in what is 
now King's Chapel Burial-ground. The teacher 
remained with the congregation until the end of the 
first month of spring, when, with several of the emi- 
grants, he went to England, — some, like himself, to 
bring their families, others in discouragement, not 
proposing to return. Winthrop records that, on the 
29th of March, about ten of the clock, Mr. Codding- 
ton and Mr. Wilson, and divers of the congregation, 
met at the governor's ; and there Mr. Wilson, pray- 
ing and exhorting the congregation to love, com- 
mended to them the exercise of prophecy in his 
absence, and designed those whom he thought 
most fit for it, — the governor, Mr. Dudley, and El- 
der Nowell. Then he desired the governor to com- 



HISTORICAL S1:R.M0NS. I 7 

mend himself aiid the rest to God by prax'er, \vliicli, 
being done, they accompanied him to the boat on his 
way to the ship, wliich sailed with hini from Saleni 
to England, on the ist of April, for more than a 
year's absence, that is, until the 26th of May, 1632. 
The church, however, was not during so much time 
without pastor or teacher. By the 2d of November 
the charge passed, for the time, into the able hands 
of famous John Eliot, who will ever be gratefully 
remembered as the Apostle to the Indians. The 
church would gladly have associated him with Wil- 
son, giving him, in the joint offices wiiich their cus- 
tom provided, the place of teacher, for which Wilson, 
in their judgment, was less fitted than for the work 
of pastor, though sermons were expected from both 
clergymen in the course of the Sunday ministrations. 
Indeed, there was no lack of ministers. Roger Wil- 
liams, of whom the world has heard so much, had 
arrived in Boston on the 5th of February, 1631, that 
is, before the departure of Wilson, In a letter, writ- 
ten to Cotton, of Plymouth, forty years later, Williams 
claims to have been unanimously chosen teacher of 
our church, and adds that he declined the office, be- 
cause of their tacit, if not open, communion with the 
Church of England, which, in his judgment, was no 
true Christian church, and not fit to have communion 
with. The record has no word upon the subject : 
but our record is very meagre, as is often the case 
where men are making history, and have no time to 
write it down. We only know, as I have said, that 



l8 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Eliot, who is remembered for his deeds as WilHams 
for his theories, took the temporary charge, while the 
future founder of Rhode Island went on his way for 
a season to Salem. 

It is characteristic of the spiritual ferment of the 
times that, in the interval during which the con- 
gregation was only in the care of laymen, there 
came from the church of Watertown the startling 
intelligence that Elder Richard Brown maintained 
that the Church of Rome, as well, I suppose, as the 
churches in Boston, Dorchester, Roxbury, and his 
own, is a true church of Christ. It would be sad, 
indeed, to think otherwise, when we recall the proph- 
ets, apostles, martyrs, saints, of that ancient com- 
munion, of whom the world was not worthy; but it 
was a heresy, then and there, to think so ; and good 
John Winthrop, the governor, and Thomas Dudley, 
the deputy-governor of the little commonwealth, and 
the elder of our church, must go to Watertown, and 
confute a doctrine so strange and dangerous. Of 
course they could consistently claim no authority 
over a sister church in every way their peer, and they 
must be content to offer counsel. Richard Brown 
seems to have been quick-tempered and passionate 
of speech ; but, though plainly in this, as in some 
other opinions, of a larger and better mind than his 
brother Puritans, he allowed himself to be persuaded 
by them, as is so often the case in theological mat- 
ters, and their anxieties were quieted. 

We see in another instance how much cono-resfa- 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. I9 

tionalism and independency were still an experiment, 
a theory, and an ideal. In the course of this very 
year we find the Court protesting against the settle- 
ment of Roger Williams over the Salem church, on 
the ground that he had declined communion with 
the Boston church, because the members of this 
church had not formally separated themselves from 
and disowned the Church of England, and had him- 
self taught the very sensible, though, for that day, 
very advanced doctrine, that the civil magistrate 
might not punish the breach of the Sabbath, or any 
other disobedience to a distinctivelv relicrious com- 
mand. It is pleasant to observe that in this case 
Congregationalism and independency had their way, 
and that Mr. Williams was established in Salem 
spite of the protest, — established, I mean, so far as 
it was possible to bind to one place and duty a per- 
son so restless and erratic ; for we hear of him in 
Plymouth by the 25th of October, 1632, and again 
in Salem in 1633. The magistrates of the little col- 
ony did not confine themselves to protest in things 
spiritual and moral. Henry Lynne was whipped 
once and again for slandering the government and 
the churches ; and early in this very year a much 
severer sentence for a similar offence was passed and 
executed upon Philip RatclifTe. 

But we must remember that this was only the 
earlier half of the seventeenth century, and that as 
late as 16 10, about the time when John Cotton 
took the charge of St. Botolph's in Old Boston, an 



20 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Arian or Unitarian was burned for his heresy at 
Smithfield. King James I., who prided himself 
upon his theology, tried, in one of his sober hours, 
to convince him of his error ; but, having learned 
from the heretic's own lips that for many years he 
had thought it unscriptural to pray to Jesus, he 
spurned him with his foot as unfit to be in his royal 
presence, and consigned him to the executioners. 

The little company in Charlestown and Boston 
were much heartened by the return of Mr. Wilson ; 
and, although the worshippers from Charlestown 
were soon to have a distinct organization of their own, 
they joined the larger company in building a house 
of worship and a dwelling for the teacher. The 
contribution for this purpose amounted to £ 1 20. 
The church was, of course, a very humble structure, 
of which there is only a traditional likeness. Built 
of wood and clay, it stood at the easterly corner 
which State Street makes with Devonshire Street. 
I may add that the name " meeting-house " had not 
yet displaced the word " church." It was a neces- 
sity of the earlier days that the Sunday gathering- 
place should be also the place for week-day meetings, 
and should come to be the meeting-house, as was 
the case indeed with the great cathedrals in the 
days of their greatest usefulness and glory, and as 
it was indeed until within a very few years with 
old St. Botolph's Church, used, so they told me, 
as a voting-place, what they call in England " the 
hustings." 



HISTORICAL SERMOxN'S. 21 

The unavoidable withdrawal of the members from 
Charlestown — nineteen men and sixteen women — 
left Wilson with a small company ; and, as it seems 
to have been their settled conviction that they must 
have a more commanding teacher, he was formally 
installed as pastor of the church on the 22d of No- 
vember, 1632, and filled the office with exceeding 
fidelity to a good old age, — an illustration of the 
Scripture that, when a man's ways please the Lord, 
He makes even his enemies to be at peace with hmi ; 
for there were divisions and alienations, and bitter- 
ness even in those fervid days. Meanwhile, in the 
Old England, Archbishop Laud, one of the most 
insane of ecclesiastical reactionists, was preparing a 
teacher after their own heart for this New England 
conf^reo-ation. lohn Cotton had been for some 
twenty years rector of the fine and almost cathedral 
Church of St. Botolph, Boston. He had carried 
to that parish from the University of Cambridge an 
excellent reputation as a scholar, especially in the 
Greek and Latin tongues. Of the Greek, he is re- 
ported to have had a critic's knowledge, and liis 
Latin is said to have been even elegant. His first 
university sermon, we are told, was enthusiastically 
received by the dignitaries of the colleges, and great 
things were predicted of the young preacher. But 
his hearers were not long of this mind. Pricked 
to the heart by the words of an earnest Puritan 
preacher, he pressed upon the congregation repent- 
ance toward God, and faith in the Lord jesus Christ ; 



22 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

but what they heard with their ears only served to 
harden their hearts and darken their faces. It befell 
him quite contrary to the experience of Dr. Chalmers, 
the famous Scotch preacher. So long as Chalmers 
was what is or was known in Scotland as " a moder- 
ate," no one cared much to hear him, while the lar- 
gest church would scarcely hold his congregation 
when he became earnest and evangelical, and had 
a point to carry in his preaching. But Cotton's 
fame as a preacher must have depended largely, first 
and last, upon voice and manner. His style is 
didactic, expository, and extremely dry ; and one 
wonders what can have become of the eloquence 
w^hich so charmed the dons of the University, or 
why that might not have been retained for the 
Master's service, as Wesley claimed the world's 
tunes for sacred uses. Nevertheless, we must not 
go behind the record ; and it is beyond question that 
to hear John Cotton preach, and look up to him as 
teacher and guide, spiritual and even temporal, was 
to our fathers the end of all perfection. He was 
greatly prized and loved in Old Boston. Williams, 
his English diocesan, not only Bishop of Lincoln, 
but Dean of Westminster and Keeper of the Great 
Seal, a busy, bustling, but most kindly man, ex- 
tended to him every indulgence; and yet a church 
with a settled ritual and order could hardly tolerate 
such freedoms as even Cotton, unwilling Dissenter as 
he was, felt compelled to insist upon ; and to Arch- 
bishop Laud his irregularities were intolerable. It 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 



23 



was plain that his ministry at lioston must soon 
come to an end, and it seemed likely that he would 
pass from his rectory to prison. Indeed, had he not 
remained in close retirement in London, that would 
undoubtedly have been his fate. So he recalled 
the Scripture, " If they persecute you in one city, 
flee to another;" and, in company with Thomas 
Hooker and Samuel Stone, reached Boston in the 
" Grififm," the 4th of September, having foiled the 
attempts of the government to detain him and his 
comjDanions. 

When we find how utterly and absolutely congre- 
gational Cotton had become, we can hardly wonder 
that the Primate of England was not content with 
him. He refused to baptize his child born upon the 
passage, not, as he said, with his exasperating mi- 
nuteness, because he had scruples as to the use of 
salt water, but because, being no longer the minister 
of a congregation, he did not hold himself em- 
powered to administer the sacraments ; and so the 
boy got the name " Seaborn " only after his father 
had been installed teacher of our church, and so had 
gained the right to baptize him. It might suffice to 
say that Cotton was welcomed to New England with 
open arms, and sought by one and another congre- 
gation, and that it was even proposed that a State 
maintenance should be pro\ided for him. This last 
proposition was happily discountenanced ; and he be- 
came at once the teacher of our church, as \\ ilson 
was already the j^astor. 



24 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

The simple ceremonial is briefly set down in 
Winthrop's journal, with the story of tlie admission 
to the fellowship of the church of the minister and 
his wife ; and we are glad to learn that the baptism 
of the little Seaborn was no longer delayed. It was 
a day of promise and hope. The colonists had 
been assured that the ceremonies of the English 
Church would not be pressed upon them, and that 
their enemies, Gardner, Morton, and Ratcliffe, 
would not be allowed to prejudice them with the 
authorities in the fatherland ; and though Dudley, 
in his severe Puritan temper, would not be as com- 
pliant as the rest in kindly feeling toward bishop and 
king, the commonwealth and the Church may well 
be accounted happy in their prospects and fairly 
equipped for their work in the wilderness. 

In such wise and out of such living stones were 
the foundations laid. They were worthy to uphold 
any superstructures which in the coming ages should 
be reared upon them. No faith could have been 
stronger, no consciences more sincere, no desire to 
live near to God and to his children deeper than 
theirs who brought their all to these shores, and 
labored, in the best light they could gain, to bring 
order into our imperfect and, as they believed, fallen 
world. They were altogether single and, as men 
account, narrow. They sought the kingdom of God 
almost as those might who cared little whether or 
no anything else should be added to it. 

Experimental religion ; obedience to the divine 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 



25 



law as taught by Moses, as fulfilled by Jesus ; mutual 
oversight and co-operation for the ends of practical 
righteousness ; the commonweal ch a reign of law, 
with so much love of thrift as is inseparable from 
the life of an Englishman, — these were all they 
prized and cherished. There was scarce anything, 
Sundays or week-days, to remind one that they had 
come from the land of Chaucer, Spenser, Bacon, 
Shakspeare, Raleigh ; that they could exercise their 
imaginations upon any subjects save the joys of the 
redeemed and the sufferings of the damned ; and 
there seemed to be no pause in the intensity of 
their pursuit of the one thing needful. A college 
was for them a school for the training of ministers. 
A knowledge of Hebrew was precious, because He- 
brew was the language in wliich God had spoken 
to Moses; and a knowledge of Greek was precious, 
because Greek was the language in which God had 
caused his last word to his rebellious children to be 
written. The heavens were watched chiefly for the 
signs and wonders wliich proclaimed di\inc warn- 
ings. Were men drowned in the rough sea, it was 
"a breach of God upon them ; " for the religious and 
moral nature pervaded and occupied and awed their 
whole being. 

In this faith they lived and endured hardness, and 
encountered, in their endeavor to translate their truth 
into life, endless perplexities, and have been .stigma- 
tized as inconsistent because they could not attain 
in the seventt'enth centurv to what we call the liber- 



26 riRST CHURCH in boston. 

ality, aiul what they j^crhaps wouUl call, wore they 
here, the incliHeionco aiul laxity, of the nineteenth 
century. In this faith they died, some of them, as 
earnest men are very likely to do, rather lamenting 
their failures than celebrating their successes. We 
may, if wo oan, add to their laith knowledge ; we 
m;u' claim for earth and earthly things, tor art and 
human culture, the rights which they seemed to 
forget ; but, if we try to centre our life and work 
other than they centred it, we seek to build a city 
without foundations, and shall learn sooner or 
later that, " e\ce}")t the Lord build the house, they 
labor in \ain who build it." 

There are deeds and sights in our modern New 
England upon which we should be ashamed to have 
the fatherL' of New England look, not because of 
their Puritan scruples, but because they were Chris- 
tians, — men of clean hands and pure eves. We 
must be baptized again into their sj^irit of non- 
conformitv, of intellectual and moral honesty, the 
courage of our convictions, the spirit which does 
not suffer men to go with the crowd when reason 
and conscience and the living Christ bid them go 
alone. \\ e must honor their new departures bv our 
own torward movements. We must be content with 
them to break rank and go alone, or be the faint 
and few that make up the advanced army, and live 
and die in that faith which is now, as ever, the sub- 
stance of things hoped for, and the evidence of 
thinos not seen. 



HISTORICAL SERMON'S. 27 

The Frenchman Renan, in the third of his Eng- 
lish Lectures of the present year, affirms that " the 
nation which is much occupied with social and re- 
ligious problems is almost always politically weak. 
The country that dreams of a kingdom of God, that 
lives for general ideas, and is engaged in enterprises 
of universal interest, sacrifices, in so doing, its proper 
individual destiny, weakens and destroys itself as an 
earthly country. We ne\'er with impunity bear the 
fire in our own bosoms." Let us sec to it that New 
England in the future as in the past is a living refu- 
tation of this dreary and unchristian philosophy, and 
was planted to show that the precise opposite is the 
truth of our life on earth. 



II. 



" For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, 

BY THEM WHICH ARE OF THE HOUSE OF ChLOE, THAT THERE 
ARE CONTENTIONS AMONG YOU. Is CHRIST DIVIDED ? " — I Cor. 
i. II, 13- 

T N a former sermon I have traced the history of 
our church until the day of the installation of 
John Cotton as teacher. I propose now to follow 
its fortunes during those years when it was the one 
and only church in Boston, the embodiment of the 
religious life of the little town, and, so close was 
the connection between things secular and things 
sacred, as truly the town as it was the church. With 
Cotton for teacher and Wilson for pastor, a congre- 
gation so rich in faithful men and women may well 
be regarded as established on this peninsula, and 
fully equipped for its serious and difficult work. In 
English history — and Old England and New Eng- 
land were very closely bound together — the years 
from 1633-4 to 1650 were crowded with events of 
the deepest interest. We begin with Charles I. and 
Archbishop Laud taking their first steps toward 
their scaffolds ; and we end with Cromwell, who has 
beheaded his king and has entered Scotland to fight 
the battle of Dunbar. In some sort still a part of 



HISTORICAL SERMON'S. 



29 



the English nation, and filled to overflowing with 
its new life, this congregation, in common with 
many other congregations already formed or form- 
ing around them, is embarked in what jM-oves to 
be a very exacting and altogether new enterprise. 
Partly aforethought and partly through the force of 
circumstances they are beginning the world anew. 
They have gone back to a few great elemental prin- 
ciples. They are, indeed, the subjects of England, 
and I have no doubt thought themselves quite sin- 
cere in saying with Dudley that " in this they had 
not altered." They were not, as he declares, " like 
those who have dispensations to lie ; but as we were 
free enough in England to turn our insides out- 
wards, sometimes to our disadvantage, very unlike 
is it that now, being procnl a fulniinc, we should 
be so unlike ourselves." Nevertheless, they are far 
from England, and at liberty to fashion Church and 
State according to new patterns ; and we find that, 
however they may be sincerely conservative and 
may profess loyalty, whenever some special act of 
obedience is asked of them, they take the matter into 
consideration until the home rulers have forcrotten 
about it, and then choose their own wav. Teemino; 
with the spirit of the new creation, their opportuni- 
ties are rarely lost upon them. 

But with op})()rtunity comes trial. We of the 
congregation have for our law and guidance infalli- 
ble sacred books, especially Moses, his judicials, pat- 
terns for our lives, political and social ; but we of 



30 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

the congregation, ministers and people, are fallible 
and not altogether agreed, indeed with an im- 
mense tendency to individualism, and as there are 
many towns already in Massachusetts beside Bos- 
ton, each with its congregation, and as every congre- 
gation is theoretically independent of every other 
and of all the rest, how will it be possible for all 
these to be one society and to hold the faith in the 
unity of the spirit and the bond of peace ? Where 
religion is such an all-absorbing interest, how can 
those who are not agreed about it live together? 
Moreover, the religions of the Old England and of 
the New England are rapidly diverging. What if 
the claims of king and bishop over governor and 
minister should be asserted and enforced ? Then, it is 
a new country, and they are new-comers into it, with 
scarcely any title except that they are there. Why 
may not others come who are not and will not be 
of the congregation, and yet wish to share its privi- 
leges, or at least to sit down unpleasantly near ? The 
congregation has already had a little experience of 
some of these practical difficulties, but as yet their 
trials had only begun ; and, at the time of which I 
am speaking, they were full of courage and hope. 

The church makes a good beginning in their 
devoted ministry to the Indians, who are suffering 
under a visitation of small-pox. The care and love 
of the white man, as we are told, " wrought much 
with them." The Englishman's God, they said, is 
a good God. These settlers, unlike their fellow- 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 3 I 

Indians, did not leave them to die uncared for, and, 
though greatly exposed, did not fall victims to the 
disease. It is well worth recording, as indicating 
the composition of the community even at that day, 
that this work of charity was not confined to those 
who were in immediate communion with the church. 
Maverick of Winesemett, for example, though a non- 
communicant, who must have lost his vote by the 
legislation of 1631, was foremost in kind offices. 
Himself, his wife and servants, went daily to them, 
ministered to their necessities, buried their dead, 
and took home many of their children. Along with 
this wholesome charity, the work of the church in 
the nurture and revival and conversion of souls goes 
prosperously forward. Beside the care and watch 
of those who have already been gathered in, there is 
a considerable increase of the communicant body. 
The coming of immigrants steadily enlarges the field 
for the friends of independency as well as for the 
gospel laborers. Some of the new townsmen are 
still strongly attached to the forms of the English 
Church and not attracted by Puritan simplicity, not 
to say uncouthness. Others are scarcely prepared 
for any form of Christian communion. 

The lapses from Christian purity and integrity, to 
which our earlv church records bear sad thou2:h not 
very frequent witness, may perhaps awaken the sus- 
picion that the outward advantages of church mem- 
bership were a temptation to some to profess a 
Christianity of which they had no sufficient experi- 



32 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

ence. Yet there can be no doubt that it was an 
increasing congregation of sincere men and women. 
The records show some thirty-seven additions in the 
first three months of Mr. Cotton's ministry. 

But the church could not long be allowed to con- 
fine its energies to works of piety and love, the nurs- 
ing of the sick, and the care of souls. There was 
not only the Lord's Day with its double services, 
there was also Thursday with its famous lecture and 
its consequent half-time school. This lecture had 
ceased to be preached before my coming to the 
church, and I made a vain effort to reinstate it as a 
union service for all Protestants. It lingered in that 
way a little longer as a shadow of the past, and then 
vanished, unless the Monday Lectureship, so called, 
of our day be its reappearing. It is first named 
soon after Mr. Cotton's coming, and may have been 
a continuation of a similar meeting in Old Boston. 
It seems to have been about equally devoted to the 
things of Cccsar and the things of God. But, whether 
on Thursdays or on the Lord's Day, the new teacher, 
who was a famous expositor, drawing his answers 
from the Scriptures in reply to the inquiries of the 
magistrates, or prompted by what seemed to him the 
necessities of the hour, sets in order the new house, 
civil and religious. The ministry, he teaches, must be 
maintained by weekly contributions. To live upon 
the income of Church funds or from State bounties 
is the beo-innino: of death. Each church must be 
independent of the rest, and must demand a fresh 



HISTORICAL SKRMOXS. 



33 



profession of faith, even of those who come from a 
sister church. A magistrate must not be deprived 
of his office without just cause, and for no cause 
must be arraigned as a public criminal. You may 
vote, he taught, but be sure that you vote only for 
certain men, — men fit to be voted for; and when, 
on one occasion, the election which followed a 
Thursday lecture did not content him, he caused it 
to be reversed on the subsequent Thursday, and, by 
putting in the right men, saved, so it is claimed, our 
Boston Common, as we trust for all generations. 

The apostle Eliot finds fault with the magistrates 
for alleged unfair treatment of the Indians; and Mr. 
Cotton is engaged by them to " reduce him," as their 
phrase was, and he was persuaded to retract charges 
which we may hope were unfounded. One is not 
sorry to learn that Mr. Cotton's advice, w^hich was 
sometimes uncalled for, was not always followed, as 
once in their choice of a new governor, in spite of 
his urging that the old incumbent should be con- 
tinued in ofifice. That incumbent was indeed de- 
serving of all confidence. But the republican spirit 
must have its expression ; and why should Mr. Cot- 
ton, who was not a very earnest republican, and who 
had only then been made a freeman, assume so 
much ? They will choose the old governor again 
by and by, but not that year. They appoint a fast 
in any time of anxiety and peril, as in 1634-5, 
when Wilson is visiting the English Puritans, and 
there are fears that he, with some new immigrants, 



34 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

may be detained and imprisoned. From time to 
time all the ministers are called to meet with the 
Boston church as a sort of council of State, as once 
when two questions were proposed to them : First, 
If a general governor is sent over from England, 
what shall we do ? Second, Is it lawful to carry the 
cross in our banners } The ministers replied : " As 
to the cross in the banner, we are not ready to say. 
That may be an idolatrous symbol or not. But as 
to the governor, we are quite clear that we should 
not accept him, not though we should be com- 
pelled to fight." In a lull of more weighty matters, 
Mr. Cotton shows from Scripture that women may 
lay aside their veils in church, where they are not, by 
custom of the place, the token of subjection. Mr, 
Endecott feels compelled to take the other side ; and 
the governor must interpose and end the discussion, 
which waxes hot. 

But the weighty matters soon came to the front. 
You have already heard of Roger Williams and his 
refusal to become the teacher of our congregation, 
on the ground that its members had not sufficiently 
separated themselves from the fellowship of the 
English Church. Almost immediately after Mr. 
Cotton's installation, Mr. Williams gives great of- 
fence to the governor and assistants of Massachu- 
setts by reiterating what he had formerly written to 
the governor and council of Plymouth, touching 
the invalidity of their title by King James's grant 
and the need of compounding with the Indians. 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 35 

Three passages in this paper were especially annoy- 
ins: to the masfistrates. 

King James is charged with having told a solemn 
public lie because he blessed God that he was the 
first Christian prince who had discovered this land, 
and again with blasphemy for calling Europe Chris- 
tendom, and then Mr. Williams had applied portions 
of the Book of the Revelations to King Charles in no 
flattering manner. What he had written was prob- 
ably only too true ; but, the governor having taken 
advice from judicious ministers, Mr. Williams is 
induced to submit and retract, but it was for the 
last time. He was soon to get a surer footing upon 
even more advanced, and firmer ground. He was 
doubtless then on his way to his doctrines of soul 
liberty and an extreme individualism, so extreme 
that, for lack of what he deemed fit companionship, 
the Lord's Supper could be no communion for him 
save as he could observe it with his wife. 

In the year 1635 the authorities of the colony 
were much disturbed by what seemed to them the 
erroneous and dangerous views of Mr. Williams 
upon the functions of the magistrate as the defender 
of the faith and the guardian of religious truth. 
He must not said Mr. Williams, punish a breach of 
the first table ; that is, he must not enforce the first 
half of the ten commandments which enjoins the 
pure worship of God. His business is with the 
public morals and with offences against order, safety, 
and decency, not with the soul's relations to God. 



36 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

He must not put an unregenerate man to his oath ; 
for what communion has light with darkness ? If 
these things are to be allowed, the magistrates 
asked, appealing to the ministers and to our teacher 
among the rest, how are we to protect ourselves 
against heresy, apostasy, or tyranny ? Once and 
again, in May and in October, Mr. Williams was con- 
vented and called to account by the civil and relig- 
ious authorities, but they were utterly unable to 
" reduce him." This being the case, it was the 
almost universal judgment, one minister only dis- 
senting, that the continuance of such a heretic any 
longer within the limits of the colony w^ould be 
fraught with extreme peril to the Church of Christ. 
Six weeks were allowed him in which to depart 
beyond the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. I cannot 
understand why any should be surprised at such a 
sentence. We may admire Roger Williams ; but 
why should we be scandalized because our fore- 
fathers had not learned, any more than the rest of 
the religious world, that the Church does not need 
the defence of the civil arm, and that whether, as 
now in France, it be Jesuit or atheist, the safe way 
is to leave every man's cause to its own merits ? 

The Puritans believed that in a fallen world the 
State must control the utterance of human thought 
as well as restrain human action. They left Eng- 
land, not because they had learned that the utmost 
freedom should be allowed in religious matters, but 
because they believed that the particular restraints 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 37 

which king and bishops imposed upon them were 
not sanctioned by Scripture. They had not thought 
for a moment that a man miglit choose his own 
church or choose to be of no church, or walk about 
the roads and through the fields on Sunday, or re- 
vert at his pleasure to Romanism. There must be 
order in these to them altogether vital matters. 
The people who could not conform in England 
should leave Ens^land, and be suffered to co in 
peace; and the people who could not conform in 
Massachusetts must go back to England or do what 
they had done, make a new home for themselves in 
the wilderness. And perhaps they thought, not un- 
reasonably, that Narragansett Bay was as good a 
place to live in as Massachusetts Bay. 

At all events, spite of all that our fathers had 
suffered from the old order in the State, there was 
a strong clinging to order of a very rigid sort, with 
very little disposition to commit themselves to the 
largest freedom. In answer to the propositions of 
certain English peers made in 1634 to join the Mas- 
sachusetts Colony, Cotton writes : " Democracy I do 
not conceive that God ever did ordain as a fit gov- 
ernment, either for church or commonwealth. If 
the people be governors, who shall be governed? 
As for monarchy and aristocracy, they are both of 
theni clearly apj^rovcd and directed in Scripture, yet 
so as God referreth the sovereignty to himself, and 
setteth up theocracy in both." 

Moving in this direction, a certain portion of the 



38 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

government were chosen for life in 1636; but this 
arrangement soon came to an end, with the increase 
of the troubles in England and the lessening pros- 
pect of noble immigrants. A large religious free- 
dom was rather the result of the emigration of 
Englishmen to America than a part of its purpose; 
and our fathers are to be admired rather for enduring 
hardness themselves than for making the world easy 
for others. They were probably quite right in the 
opinion that Massachusetts was not large enough to 
contain in that day the friends and the opponents 
of Williams. It is worth noting that personally 
they seem to have been on very friendly terms with 
the daring innovator, and that, in its indirect results, 
this controversy with Mr. Williams advanced the 
interests of freedom ; for it was decided in First 
Church that communicating with the Church of 
England should be no disqualification for our own 
religious fellowship. Some, who are in the habit of 
complaining that Williams was banished, seem 
hardly to have understood how little there was in 
the constitution of the new community to have 
made any other course likely. The church leaned 
almost absolutely upon the commonwealth, which it 
inspired and guided. Except in Boston, all persons 
subject to taxation were compelled to contribute to 
the support of the ministers. All who were able 
must attend the authorized public worship. The 
results of synods were embodied in laws which must 
be obeyed. Persons and churches in excommunica- 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 39 

tion were without civil privileges. It was not the 
day of moral suasion, and in all Christendom there 
was no nation without an established church. It is 
not too much to say that the Rhode Island settle- 
ments in their endeavors to maintain order were 
not quite independent of more conservative Massa- 
chusetts. 

In the month of March, 1636, Rev. Hugh Peters, 
or Peter, as he writes his name, preaching to 
First Church, proposes, among other things not so 
useful, that they should take order for employment 
of people, especially women and children, in the 
winter time ; for he feared that idleness would be 
the ruin both of church and commonwealth. Per- 
haps tliis may be taken as the first trace of an em- 
ployment society in our congregation. 

But this year had not closed before our church 
became the centre of a most painful religious agita- 
tion, which in that day must needs involve the 
State as well. The story, one may hope, belongs to 
the past. The very phrases in which it was first 
told are strancre to modern ears, and need to be 
translated into the language of our day. .And yet 
it is still profoundly interesting, as a chapter in the 
history of man's deepest experience; and it is singu- 
larly characteristic of the earliest New England life. 
It may be possible, even at this day, to reach what 
was vital and of abiding significance in this other- 
wise painful story. What I am to relate would have 
been impossible in any but a profoundly religious 



40 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

community, and to men and women whose thoughts 
were much turned in upon their own minds and 
hearts. It is an old and sacred saying that he must 
die who hath looked upon God. There is a vision 
of the Eternal and a persuasion of the Divine In- 
dwelling which threaten our personal and individual 
being. God becomes so truly all in all that we have 
no work and ways and conduct and character that 
we can call our own. It is a condition which, if it 
is not the most perfect sanity, may become the 
wildest insanity. God works in us to will and to 
do; and this is interpreted to mean that God does 
all, and that what is done is all right, not because 
conscience says so, not because good men say so, 
not because the law says so, but because God, who 
dwells in us and we in him, does it. It is he who 
makes us, and not we ourselves. We are his chil- 
dren. We know it, we feel it. On such a day, in 
such a place, in such a moment of exalted religious 
feeling, we had the earnest of the Spirit in our 
hearts. Not by any works, better or worse, poor at 
the best, are we justified, — there can be no rest for 
us in any such justification, — it is God that justi- 
fieth ; who is he that condemneth } God knoweth 
who are his, and he has revealed to us that we are 
of that number; and though character and conduct 
may change, God does not change. Man looks at 
the works, God looks at the worker. 

Such was the outcome of the deep religious life 
of the First Church, as the year 1636 was drawing 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 4 1 

toward its close. Men called it " antinomianism," 
because it seemed to set itself against law, and was a 
magnifying of God's grace and presence in the soul 
that misled the believer into speaking lightly of self- 
control, and in unbalanced or undisciplined or pas- 
sionate natures into the neglect of self-control. As 
might have been expected, it was the infirmity of 
noble and religious souls. In our religious history 
the story of the antinomianism of First Church is 
largely the tragic story of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, 
and of the consequent civil strife stirred by her 
brother-in-law, the Rev. John Wheelwright. Mrs. 
Hutchinson came to Boston from England, in Sep- 
tember, 1634 ; Mr. Wheelwright, not far from June 1 2, 
1636. This lady had been an earnest and thor- 
oughly sympathetic attendant upon Mr. Cotton's 
preaching in Old Boston. She is described by Mr. 
Winthrop as a woman with a ready wit and a bold 
spirit, who brought over with her two dangerous 
errors: first, that the person of the Holy Ghost 
dwells in a justified person; second, that no sanc- 
tification can help to evidence to us our justification. 
Mrs. Hutchinson was not a woman who could hide 
in her heart what she believed to be tlic divine 
counsel. By herself, and in concert with her 
brother-in-law, she strove to make converts, always 
claiming tliat in her chief points of doctrine, if not 
in all that seemed to proceed inevitably from her 
principles, Mr. Cotton was of her mind, .And un- 
doubtedly she could easily have sui)i)()rted her a>ser- 



42 



FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 



tion by quoting his words, as she might have done 
many unquahfied and unwise sayings of Martin 
Luther to the same effect. She gave great offence 
by holding and preaching to what we should call in 
this day parlor-meetings, — gatherings of women, 
numbering even in that small town some sixty 
hearers. Mr. Wilson's ministrations seemed to her 
so below the mark, so legal, or, as we should say, 
ethical, that she was known to go out from them 
and leave the church, — a great scandal in that day. 
And her friends even proposed — and most likely, 
save for Mr. Winthrop's opposition, would have pre- 
vailed — to establish Wheelwright as the third minis- 
ter and assistant teacher over the little church. 

It came about at last that, with the exception of 
Wilson and Winthrop, and one or two more, the 
church in Boston were carried away by Mrs. Hutch- 
inson's teachings. Well, you ask, what then ? What 
harm could that do ? Was she not, as her own hus- 
band, who should know, well said, a dear saint and 
servant of God ; and were any the worse for sharing 
her mysticism and refinements, and is it not the 
commonest thing for those who have the time to 
amuse themselves with theological ingenuities.^ Yes; 
but remember that the Massachusetts of that day, 
though not unthrifty or quite blind to this world, 
was dead in earnest, exceedingly devoted to religious 
things and persuaded of the harmfulness of false 
and unscriptural teachings, and that an earnest re- 
ligionist was not merely a celebrity, to be thronged 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 



43 



and feasted and flattered and cast aside. Christen- 
dom, too, had not been without sad experience of a 
fanaticism which issues in frightful immoralities, and 
pretends to serve God by destruction instead of ful- 
filment. The prudent did not like this talk about 
the filthy rags of our own righteousness and the 
worthlessness of honesty and purity. It might be 
according to the letter, but it was not according to 
the spirit, and the examples of the Bible ; and they 
had heard it, not only from heated preachers and 
enthusiasts, but fi^om the lips of , the vile hypocrite, 
Captain Underbill, in his seasons of real or pre- 
tended penitence, when he went before the church 
voluntarily or of necessity, and, as Mr. Winthrop 
records, could scarcely be heard for his blubbering. 
Our fathers were always anxious about men and 
women who claimed to be perfect and believed 
themselves to be absolutely under divine guidance. 
So, as time went on, the State as well as the Church 
was thrown into confusion and peril. The Boston 
soldiers refused to march with Wilson for their 
chaplain against the Pequots, because he was what 
they called — and it was in that day very opprobrious 
language — a legal preacher. 

Things went on from bad to worse, until Wheel- 
wright's preaching on one occasion awakened a not 
unfounded apprehension of civil tumult, and led to 
the disarming of many Boston citizens, his sup- 
porters and petitioners in his behalf, and finally to 
his own banishment, a i)unishment which in his 



44 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

cooler years he confessed to have been necessary. 
The election of the governor turned absolutely upon 
the theological question ; and Mr. Winthrop owed 
his success at the polls to Rev. John Wilson, who 
climbed a tree and made a speech in his behalf. Mr. 
Cotton was almost swept away by the antinomian 
tide, and, as it seems to me, would have lost his 
head utterly, if he had not been steadied by the 
sound sense of modest John Winthrop. The words 
of the governor at the opening of the strife ought 
to have put an end to it, and are greatly in advance 
of much modern theology. " Withal he made this 
request to the brother (which he said he did seri- 
ously and affectionately), that, seeing these variances 
grew and some estrangement withal from some 
words and phrases which were of human invention 
and tended to doubtful disputation rather than to 
edification, and had no footing in Scripture, nor had 
been in use in the purest churches for three hundred 
years after Christ, that for the peace of the church 
they might be forborne, — he meant person of the 
Holy Ghost and real union, — and concluded that 
he did not intend to dispute the matter." 

It does not appear that Mr. Winthrop was any 
less earnest than Mr. Cotton in his persuasion of 
the Divine Indwelling, but he was certainly wiser 
than Mr. Cotton in his understanding and use of 
this vital persuasion. Happily, there were other 
churches in Massachusetts besides the church in 
Boston, or independency had been a sad failure. 



HISTORICAL SKRMOXS. ^c 

The other churches had no right to command ; but 
they were allowed, if not entitled, to advise. There 
was but one Mrs. Hutchinson; and, host as she was 
and singularly persuasive, she was drifting into specu- 
lative novelties, and in due time the reaction came, 
alas ! in a tide which swept her, as it seems to me, 
not without cruelty and injustice, out of the church 
and the commonwealth. She was brouo-ht first 
before the General Court. They sentenced her to 
banishment, and yet deferred the execution of the 
sentence until the winter should have passed ; but, 
proving incorrigible, she was brought to the Thurs- 
day lecture in the little Boston house of worship, 
first on the 1 5th of March. Her errors were enumer- 
ated and condemned, and herself admonished, the 
governor and treasurer of the commonwealth, being 
members of our church, coming from the General 
Court in Cambridge to join in the sentence. But 
this proved insufficient, and she was summoned 
again on the 22d of the same month; and, all hope 
of her repentance having ceased, Mr. Wilson was 
told to pronounce this judgment: " Anne, the wife 
of our brother William Hutchinson, having on the 
15th of the third month been openly in publique 
congregation admonished of sundry errours held by 
her, was on the 2 2d day cast out of the church for 
impenitently persisting in a manifest lye then ex- 
pressed by her in open congregation, the 15th of the 
same month, 1638." 

Our church does not, as it seems to me. make a 



46 P'IRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

good figure in this business. It was unquestionably 
a necessity in those times to fine, disarm, and even 
banish leading antinomians. So young a common- 
wealth could not bear such internal conflicts, as 
Puritan experience in Holland had already shown. 
A few more months of such strife would have satis- 
fied waiting and sympathizing friends in England 
that Massachusetts could be no home for them, and 
needed for its better government a strong arm of 
some sort, if not that of Charles or of Laud. Un- 
questionably, it was as necessary that Mrs. Hutchin- 
son should go away as it is needful to separate one 
who has been overwrought from the old neighbor- 
hood and household. But it seems to me that John 
Cotton, considering that he himself, spite of his nice 
theological distinctions, was much implicated with 
his parishioner, and that the congregation almost 
without exception had been of her mind, and 
that he had been much annoyed by Mr. Wilson's 
reasonableness and moderation, might have recog- 
nized in this sincere woman a spiritual and mental 
exaltation which left her scarcely accountable. He 
was always much too facile a man, and should never 
have allowed the name of his friend to go down on 
the church record with the brand of falsehood. Mr. 
Winthrop was wiser in his first than in his final 
dealing with the matter, and perhaps had this in 
mind when late in life he declined to have part in a 
similar severity, saying he had done too much of 
that work already. 



HISTORICAL SERMOXS. 



47 



It was no way a necessary result of her banish- 
ment ; but it is sad to remember that in 1643 an 
inroad of Indians into the Dutch country brought 
death to Mrs. Hutchinson and to all her household, 
with the exception of a daughter eight years of age. 
This child was afterward restored through the 
agency of the General Court of Massachusetts, and 
placed with friends in Boston. The punishment 
inflicted upon Mrs. Hutchinson had its natural effect 
in exaggerating her eccentricities of thought and 
speech ; and we do not find that she ever made any 
concessions. One does not like to think how this 
most blessed life, which so abounded in the hearts 
of these New England men and women, failed of its 
proper issues for lack of wise guidance. It was gain 
unspeakable to have attained such a deep- sense of 
God ; and it would have been the part of a wise 
piety not to put so mysterious an experience into 
propositions, and then draw inferences from them 
and quote texts in support of them. It had been 
wiser so to receive and so to give the holy and sweet 
light that all men would rejoice in it, and be the 
better for it. It is not success to owe our escape 
from fanaticism to a dulness of the religious sense. 
Cotton and Mrs. Hutchinson and Henry Vane and 
Wheelwright spake truly, when they said that none 
other and no less than God dwells in us, if we will 
suffer him, and that all our deep springs are in him, 
and that the life which he would have us live is pos- 
sible only because he lives in us. But they should 



48 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

not have failed to add that whom God calls he calls 
to righteousness, and that a loving heart is the only 
absolutely sure token that he who is Love dwells 
in us. 

Must the religious world always oscillate between 
a fervid fanaticism and a tradition of piety, which is 
only a saying of prayers, an assenting to creeds, and 
an endeavor to live a decent life ? The church of 
Boston did well to be profoundly moved by Mrs. 
Hutchinson's living words, when she urged that the 
gospel means not some addition to our theology, 
nor yet some small repairs of character, but God in 
us, fashioning thought and act into his perfect like- 
ness. Minister and people, teacher and pastor alike, 
should have labored together to add manhood, 
knowledge, self-control, and all the fruits of the 
Spirit to this great faith. The dry, dogmatic, literal, 
formal church of Boston needed Mrs. Hutchinson's 
mystic piety and her freer dealing with the old 
affirmations. But they were left to exorcise as evil 
a spirit which rather needed to be guided and oc- 
cupied. In the highest view of the matter, it was a 
failure, and yet one of those failures of the sincere 
and devoted upon which we build arguments of 
hope, and press onward to the things which are 
before. 



III. 

"THESE ALL, HAVING OBTAINED A GOOD REPORT THROUGH FAITH 
RECEIVED NOT THE PROMISE : GOD HAVING PROVIDED SOME 
BETTER THING FOR US, THAT THEV WITHOUT US SHOULD NOT BE 
MADE PERFECT."— //t'<!'- xi. 39' 40. 

WE have traced the story of our church to the 
time when they could bear Mrs. Hutchinson 
no loncrer. She has been defeated, and is gone into 
the wiTderncss. It is one of the lessons of civil 
history, that a defeated rebellion strengthens the 
victorious government ; but the reign is rather a 
supremacy of law than a reign of love, and instead 
of peace and mutual confidence, we have a con- 
strained and superficial quietness. Moreover, the 
Church of Boston had sympathized too deeply and 
widely with Mrs. Hutchinson to be soon at ease 
after the whirlwind in which she had been separated 
from them had passed over. The extravagances of 
the Hutchinsonians increased, and seemed to justify 
the sentence of expulsion ; and yet those wlio passed 
this sentence may have reflected that oppression 
makes even wise men mad. Mr. Cotton felt called 
upon to deplore "his own and the church's indo- 
lence and credulity," which had allowed such grave 
errors to gain such a hold upon the community, and 



4 



50 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

explained how he himself had been deceived. In a 
sermon preached on a day of fasting and prayer on 
account of the prevalence of the small-pox, he la- 
ments the want of zeal in the professors of religion 
and the general decay of piety. The life that should 
have become godliness had been consumed in envy- 
ings and strife. It was a time of repressions and 
excommunications in all the neighborhoods and 
churches. Moreover, the great enemy of man 
seemed, so thought our fathers, to be especially 
intent to work mischief amongst them, tempting to 
crime. It must have been a very sad day in Boston 
when Dorothy Talbye, driven to insanity by almost 
insane religious teachings, was hung for murdering 
her little daughter, in the hope, as she said, that she 
might free her from future misery. She manifested 
no penitence. She acted, she said, from a revela- 
tion ; she only vainly begged to be beheaded, as less 
painful and less shameful than hanging, whilst the 
Rev. Hugh Peter, from Salem, exhorted the people 
to take heed against being deceived by revelations, 
and not to despise, as she had done, the ordinance 
of excommunication. But aside from such deplor- 
able confounding of madness with criminality, there 
was at this time scarcely a shadow of freedom in 
Massachusetts. For a few months in the year 1638 
a law was in force by which excommunication for 
six months carried with it a liability to fines and im- 
prisonments. The churches were independent only 
in name. One minister and some individual Chris- 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 5 I 

tians ventured to maintain that baptized persons 
shall be adnMtted to the communion without a par- 
ticular examination of their faith, and were com- 
pelled to retract. A Mr. Britton undertook to 
criticise the churches as over-doijmatic and exclusive, 
and, because he had no money to pay a fine withal, 
was openly whipped for his offence. 

But thouo^h the Church of Boston meets with small 
success in any endeavor which may have been made 
to harmonize orthodoxy and toleration, and one 
must keep a watch over the lips, and be careful not 
to think aloud, the moral condition of the town is 
carefully looked after in the administration of church 
exhortations and discipline. The ministers, prompt- 
ed by the General Court, protest in their sermons 
against a growing extravagance in dress ; but very 
little comes of it, because, as we are told, their own 
wives are so deeply implicated in the prevailing 
deeeneracv. Nevertheless, morals are coming to 
the front, and the clergy are acting upon the per- 
mission of the synod of 1637, and presenting the 
grace of the gospel under a covenant of works. 
With the theological scrupulosity of the day, they 
were told that this might be done " under," but not 
" in and by," such a covenant of works. 1 here is a 
distinction here, even though you may not all be able 
to see it. The church turns its attention, as the 
record shows, to the traders, and tries to expound 
the right and wrcMig of buying and selling ; not, of 
course, exhausting so large a matter, but making a 



52 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

good, earnest beginning. Robert Keaine, brother- 
in-law of Rev. John Wilson, founder of the Artillery 
Company, was received in Boston Church, March 
20, 1635, and had already been chosen four times 
from Boston to the General Court. A shopkeeper 
in our town, he had asked what seems to have been 
the worth in money, and yet a very large price for 
his goods, and had found purchasers willing to pay 
what he asked; but first the Court and then the 
church adjudge him exorbitant. Excommunication 
was proposed and preached about by Mr. Cotton, 
with a somewhat full discussion of the laws of buy- 
inor ^.i-i(j selHnor. Mr. Keaine was brous^ht before 
the assembly of Christians, and bewailed his cov- 
etous and corrupt heart, not, however, without ex- 
cusing himself in some particulars. An admonition 
was finally accepted as sufficient, so far as the 
church was concerned in the matter ; but the de- 
linquent was sentenced by the Court to pay a fine 
of / 100. He soon recovered his character and was 
restored to favor, as one whose judgment, not his 
heart, was at fault. About this time Edward Palmer, 
for his extortion in taking /^i it,s. yd. for the plank 
and W'Ood-work of Boston stocks, is fined five 
pounds, and censured to be set an hour in the 
stocks. The fine was remitted to ten shillings ; 
but the remainder of the sentence w^as executed, so 
far as appears, the Ipswich chronicler telling us 
that "he had the honor to sit in them an hour him- 
self, to warn others not to offend in the like kind." 



HISTORICAL SERMOxXS. 



53 



The church is scarcely ten years old, and must 
begin its series of removals from one house of wor- 
ship to another; but what would we not give to- 
day for so much as a fragment of the first building? 
No wonder it was worn out with such continuous 
use ! They told me in the English Groton that the 
rector's house in the Winthrop Parish was more 
than three hundred years old; but here, in two 
hundred and fifty years, the first things have all 
vanished, and amongst them the rude structure 
within whose rough walls and under whose humble 
roof men and women had thought and felt and 
preached and pra}ed and debated with such in- 
tensity of life, as when, to take a sadly memorable 
instance, on two successive Thursday Lecture days, 
Mrs. Hutchinson and the theologians vainly try to 
meet in those labyrinths of divinity, from ten in the 
morning quite into the evening hours, and the longer 
they debate the farther are they apart. In this first 
building the Artillery Election sermon was preached 
in 1638 by John Wilson, for the first and only time 
during the period with which my sermons have been 
occupied. But the house could not well have been 
made to last, and it is outgrown and outworn, and 
even then was rapidly falling into decay. So after 
the usual, and, I believe, always inevitable discus- 
sion as to the proper site, and the familiar inter- 
position of Mr. Cotton, without wliom nothing 
could be done, it was decided to place the new 
building nearly opposite the head of what is now 



54 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

State Street. The church cost about ^i,ooo, the 
old house meeting about three-fifths of the amount, 
and the remainder being supplied by voluntary and 
ready contributions. It was the home of the con- 
gregation until it was destroyed by fire in 171 1. 
The record in our hymn-book and under our church 
tower is not quite correct, for the second house of 
worship was not finished until 1640. In the next 
year, under the order of the General Court, the 
ministers agree upon a form of catechism to be 
printed for general use, and there are evidences of 
great care in moral as well as theological discipline. 
It is pleasant to find it recorded that on a training 
day at this time twelve hundred men were under 
arms, and not one of them intoxicated or heard to 
use profane speech. The utmost pastoral fidelity 
characterized the Boston ministers, Mr. Cotton es- 
pecially teaching that if old and faithful officers 
had grown poor in the public service, they should 
be maintained at the public cost, and not dropped, 
as one Mr. Hathorne had proposed in the public 
caucus. 

The story which I have been telling you has thus 
far been quite provincial in its character, — a village 
tale, as you may be almost ready to say ; but it is 
none the less the story of not a few who are soon to 
share largely in the new career which in those days 
was opening wide for Englishmen. It was a time 
when the temptation to go back to England was 
very great, — too strong, indeed, to be resisted, if 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 55 

duty as well as the desire for the old home seemed 
to plead for a return. The tidings from the mother 
country are as startling as they are encouraging. 
There are enterprises in Church and State which 
demand just such men as these New England 
colonists. For ministers and laymen there is good 
work to be done in the Old World, about which 
they had been ready to despair. A revolution is 
impending. The news comes fast. The Earl of 
Strafford died upon the scaffold in 1641 ; Arch- 
bishop Laud was at that time confined in the 
Tower under an impeachment for high treason, and 
after three years' imprisonment came out only to 
be tried and executed. In 1642 the Royalists with- 
draw from Parliament, and Charles raises his stand- 
ard at Nottingham; whilst in 1643 the assembly 
of divines gathers in Westminster, and Cotton, 
Davenport, and Hooker receive an invitation to 
visit England and sit in that synod, — three Inde- 
pendents amongst a crowd of Presbyterians as 
bigoted as any of the okl churchmen. Fortunately 
Hooker dissuaded Davenport and Cotton, who were 
inclined to go. The errand would have issued in 
disappointment, and landed them in the midst of a 
civil war which brought to the scaffold, at the time 
of the Restoration, the famous Hugh Peter, who, 
after ha\i ng been for seven years a New England 
minister, had become a great promoter of the Com- 
monwealth. Sir Henry Vane, too, a member of 
First Church, was sacrificed at a later dav to the 



56 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

same terrible necessity ; but he parted from our 
communion and town as early as 1637, i^ ^'"'^ midst 
of the conflict with Mrs. Hutchinson, who had found 
in him a most hearty sympathizer. Though he 
had not felt justified as a thorough-going republican 
in supporting Cromwell, the restoration of Charles 
II. brought disgrace and death to one who was a 
sincere and deeply religious man, and a great 
helper of New England. 

Meanwhile there was work enough for those who 
remained in the new home. Virginia asks for 
missionaries, — not being content with such minis- 
trations as she had, — and with reason, unless Mr. 
Winthrop had been misinformed as to the character 
of the clergy of that colony. At Thursday Lec- 
ture three are designated for this business, one of 
whom, Mr. Thompson, undertakes the errand. He is 
described as " a very melancholic man and of a crazy 
body," but his spirits and his outward frame were 
greatly helped by a very encouraging ministry in that 
Old Dominion. The conflict in England increases 
in bitterness, and First Church leads the way in 
keeping a day of fasting in regard of the war between 
king and Parliament, and the example is widely 
followed by sister churches. The scrupulous must 
have been somewhat relieved when they learned that 
the Red Cross of England, which had been suspected 
as an idol, and had given occasion to so much dis- 
cussion, was borne aloft alike by Royalists and Round- 
heads. All this stir in Ens^land was unfavorable to 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 57 

Massachusetts. It secured for her freedom of devel- 
opment, but drained away her Hfe ; for you will under- 
stand that the tide of emigration to New England 
had not only ceased, but had begun to flow the other 
way. The expatriation of patriotic Englishmen 
ended from the day of the summoning of Charles's 
fifth Parliament. Time would fail me to recite the 
names of famous New Englanders who filled the 
highest places in the army and navy under the Par- 
liament or under Cromwell, and were raised to the 
highest posts in the civil service, or reinforced the 
rank and file in that day of earnest struggle. For- 
tunately there was a deep reservoir to be drained. 
At the end of ten years after Winthrop's landing, 
nearly twenty-one thousand Englishmen had crossed 
in three hundred vessels, at a cost of two hundred 
thousand pounds sterling ; and as there were many 
who must needs go back and do the work of the day 
in England, so there were those who must needs 
remain. And in their twofold capacity of statesmen 
and of churchmen, and as custodians of ecclesiastical 
and of practical Christianity, the people of Boston 
were abundantly occupied. Their new house of wor- 
ship from 1640 to 1650 was the scene of many ani- 
mated and heated debates on week-days, as well as 
a place of prayer and religious instruction on the 
Lord's Day. 

It seems to have been a great jDoint with our 
fathers in this church to secure the attendance, at 
their wor.^hij) and jircaching, of persons whom they 



58 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

deemed heretical and who did not wish to go. The 
son and son-in-law of Mrs. Hutchinson were so un- 
wise as to make their appearance in Boston in 1641, 
and were presently called to account for reviling 
the churches. The fines which were imposed upon 
them could not be collected, because they had noth- 
ing to pay withal ; but, besides being imprisoned for 
a while, they were compelled to make a part of First 
Church congregation during their enforced stay in 
Boston. " They refused to come to the religious 
assemblies except they were led, and so they came 
duly." Somewhat later, in 1642, La Tour, from Aca- 
dia, and his men, though "papists," as our fathers 
were at pains to call them, came of their own accord 
to our church meetings, perhaps from policy. Nev- 
ertheless, this did not ward off a very warm debate 
in the congregation in 1643 upon the propriety and 
scripturalness of having any league and fellowship 
with idolaters, — a discussion in which Jehoshaphat, 
Ahaziah, Josiah, Pharaoh Necho, Amaziah, Solomon, 
Abraham, and Lot fill a very large place. This same 
year we find unwilling worshippers at First Church 
in the persons of Samuel Gorton and some of his 
adherents. Gorton was originally a London cloth- 
ier, but became afterwards a Bostonian and an an- 
tinomian, then a mystic theologian and leader of a 
colony, besides being — whether with or without 
sufficient provocation — a disturber of the peace. 
Planted on a kind of debatable ground between two 
settlements, he had already suffered a severe j^unish- 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 59 

ment at the hands of the authorities of Rhode Island, 
and had made himself troublesome even to so indul- 
gent a ruler as Roger Williams, He was, however, 
finally taken prisoner and brought by our governor 
to Boston. He, too, must go to the church, and he 
is willing to hear Mr. Cotton preach if he may be 
permitted to answer him. " So in the afternoon they 
came, and w^ere placed in the fourth seat, right before 
the elders. Mr. Cotton in his ordinary text taught 
out of Acts xix. of Demetrius pleading for Diana's 
silver shrines or temples. After sermon Gorton 
desired leave to speak, which, being granted, he re- 
peated the points of Mr. Cotton's sermon, and, coming 
to that of the silver shrines, he said that in the church 
there was nothing now but Christ, so that all our 
orders, ministers, sacraments were but men's inven- 
tions for show and pomp, and no other than those 
silver shrines of Diana," with much else which rather 
piques than satisfies our curiosity, and leads us to 
think that, however troublesome he mav have been 
as a ruler of men, he might have been put to good 
use as a professor of theology. After the man- 
ner of the times it was deemed necessary to punish 
him and his associates with great severity, though 
happily for the reputation of Massachusetts they 
escaped the sentence of death, which some proposed. 
Another French delegation appears in the persons 
of Marie and others, who come for D'Aulncy, the 
rival of La Tour. The)- are not inclined to public 
worshi}), and are acquainted by the governor with 



6o FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

" our manner that all men either come to our public 
meetings or keep themselves quiet in their houses ; " 
so he invited them home to his own house, where 
they remained until sunset, reading books in Latin 
and French and walking in his garden. It is added 
that " they gave no offence." 

The church mind was much engaged in the last 
half of this decade of years with so modifying and 
qualifying independency that the different congre- 
gations might have at once the privileges of freedom 
and the advantages of some mild and moral control. 
There must be a confederation at once of the colo- 
nies and of the congregations. Independency was 
threatened by Presbyterianism on the one hand and 
by chaos and anarchy on the other. The issue of 
the Cambridge Synod of 1646-8 was the acceptance 
of the Westminster confession of faith and the set- 
ting forth of New England Congregationalism as 
the order of the churches. In this way the congre- 
gations provided for something like united effort, and 
put themselves into what might be regarded as the 
best condition to meet the assaults which had already 
been begun upon them, not only by Presbyterians, 
but by the great company of the unchurched and the 
unfranchised, — by this time the large majority of 
the colonists. Only the church-member could vote ; 
and the way into the church was barred. But there 
were many engaged to open it,— Episcopalians and 
moderate Calvinists, and men whose experience was 
rather moral than spiritual, or who were unwilling to 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 6l 

be questioned as to their religious exercises. Peti- 
tions upon this subject were multipHed ; appeals 
were carried to England, and sermons were preached 
in First Church in which the bearer of the petition 
for enlargement, on his way to the mother country, 
was likened to Jonas. These words of the Patriarch 
Cotton, as our church historian, Emerson, tells us, 
were considered oracular. It so happened that a 
violent storm arose on the passage, and one of the 
female passengers, distracted with fear, went to Mr. 
Fowle, the bearer of the document, and by her cries 
and entreaties prevailed on him to give up the obnox- 
ious petition, which she instantly cast into the sea. 
Mr. Fowle had, however, taken care to preserve the 
original papers, which he published on his arrival 
under the title of " New England's Jonas cast up in 
London." By the help of fines and imprisonments, 
and the preoccupation of Parliament with things 
more pressing, the movement was stayed for the time. 
But it was the first muttering of the tempest, and the 
first premonition of the change which, step by step, 
was to pass over New England, until in our day the 
exemption of houses of worship is almost the last solid 
vestige of the ancient order of the religious world. 
Ecclesiasticism in that day was universal; but no- 
where, perhaps, was it put to so severe a strain as 
in New England. You might receive the privileges 
dependent upon church-niembership at very little 
cost in the sacramental communions of the Old 
World, but on this side of the sea it was a serious 



62 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

business for man or woman to gain admission to a 
church, and to retain the place which, after the most 
careful consideration, had been accorded. Disci- 
pline in those days was a reality. Any person who 
stood excommunicated six months was liable, by a 
law of 1638, to fine, imprisonment, or banishment. 
This law lasted, indeed, only a year, but this was long 
enough to show the mind of the community. 

I ought not to pass over without some mention 
the missionary work amongst the Indians in which, 
with other churches, First Church was at this time 
engaged. Wilson was earnest and successful in this 
most difficult, but by no means unblessed enterprise. 
Sagamore John, near Watertown, " began to hearken 
after God and his ways." He was "kept down by 
fear of the scoffs of the Indians," but on his death- 
bed " sent for Mr. Wilson to come to him, and com- 
mitted his only child to his care." Our pastor 
shared largely with the apostle Eliot in the attempt 
to Christianize and civilize the tribes around. We 
read of an Indian lecture which was much frequented 
by the natives, and the missionaries were greatly en- 
couraged by the belief that they were bringing back 
to the fold the remains of the ten tribes of Israel 
scattered by the Assyrian conquest. Wilson was 
probably the author of a book upon the Indian mis- 
sion, published in London in 1647, and entitled 
" The Day-Breaking if not the Sun-Rising of the 
Gospel with the Indians of New England." Out of 
this book grew, in 1649, an English society for pro- 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 



63 



moting and propagating the gospel in the United 
Colonies of New England; but already, Nov. 4, 1646, 
by ordering that two ministers should be sent and 
paid for going amongst the Indians every year, the 
General Court of Massachusetts became the first 
missionary society in Protestant Christendom. A 
little earlier than this, that is, in 1645, Boston voted 
to allow forever to the master fifty pounds and a 
house, and thirty pounds to an usher of a free school 
open to Indians as well as to whites. Free schools 
there were in our town from the beginning, by vol- 
untary contributions at first, as appears from a long 
list of donations in 1636. These voluntary contri- 
butions were succeeded by the enforced tax which 
has continued to the present day. 

Monday, the 26th of March, 1649, about noon, was 
a sad time in the Church of Boston. It was John 
Winthrop's last hour on earth. The townsmen 
gathered in their silent way for his simple, solemn 
funeral, Tuesday, April 3. But a little more than 
sixty-one years of age, he was a very young old 
man, and they needed his precious life. There 
were many things in progress which he would 
gladly have seen to the end. King Charles was 
beheaded Jan. 30, 1649, but Winthrop had not 
heard the tidings. We cannot resist the thought 
that his spirit, wiser and gentler in age than even 
in youth, would have brought in gentle counsels, 
and have devised some milder way than the death- 
penalty for the protection of the commonwealth 



64 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

aeainst the insanity of the Quakers, and so have 
saved the names of Norton and Wilson from the 
reproach which their share in the sad business has 
brought upon them ; but that story belongs to the 
next decade, when First Church will not stand 
alone. 

The increasing needs of the town could no 
longer be met by a single religious society. Out 
of this necessity and not out of a bitter and pro- 
tracted theological controversy, as in the case of the 
Third Church, sprang the Second Church, which was 
destined soon to become a power in the community. 
From the 5th of June, 1650. Cotton and Wilson are 
no longer the only Boston ministers. Cotton's time 
is short, only about a year and a half; but Wilson 
has still a long service before him, and we leave our 
church in their charge. Emerson tells us in his 
history that in 1650 there were about forty churches 
in New England, and seven thousand seven hundred 
and fifty communicants. One thousand and thirty- 
four children were baptized in Boston during Cot- 
ton's ministry. Three hundred and six men and 
three hundred and four women had been admitted 
to the communion by the end of 1652, whilst seven- 
teen persons had been publicly admonished, and five 
excommunicated for irreclaimable errors. 

I have brought down my story to a time when the 
sufficiency of the Puritan method in gathering and 
perpetuating a church began to be seriously ques- 
tioned, if it could not be freely debated. This ques- 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 65 

tioning was doubtless stimulated by the intimate 
connection between the Church and the State, and 
the fact that to be a church-member was to be a 
voter, if one desired to be. But this was not all. We 
have here much more and deeper than the natural 
wish of the majority to have some share in the gov- 
ernment. In the Church of Puritanism there was 
no place save for a very pronounced Christian expe- 
rience, — no place for the child growing in wisdom 
and stature, and yet with no deep sense of sinful- 
ness ; no place for those whose religion is rather 
moral than spiritual, and even that mostly of the 
silent sort, not loving to give an account of itself. 
The Puritans would have for their fellowship the 
highest and purest and most mature, or nothing. 
Roger Williams reduced this rule to its severest and 
most absurd terms when he refused to hold com- 
munion as a Christian with any one save his own 
wife. The Puritan Church was not a place for the 
nurture and maturing of Christians. What they 
sought was quality, not quantity, — a few witnesses, a 
few shining lights, not a multitude of the baptized and 
the confirmed and the church-going and the prayer- 
reading, with just the least tinge of Christianity. Now 
precisely at this point, where this problem of church- 
fellowship begins to be discussed under the breath, our 
ancient congregation comes into contact with our 
modern church life. It is a living question to-day how 
to enlarge the Christian company without so depre- 
ciating and diluting its membership that it will be 

5 



66 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

little better than a baptized heathenism. That is 
what we have been trying to learn. That is what 
others have in mind, I suppose, when they speak of 
" the godly discipline of the laity." Half-way cove- 
nants, the relaxation of the demand for a statement 
of religious experience by the proposed communi- 
cant, the opening of the church to any who choose 
to come without any questions or conditions, have 
all been congregational experiments in this direction, 
and they have not been successful ; on the contrary, 
the wider the doors are open the fewer care to enter, 
as if they felt that there is no treasure within. Slen- 
der as the company of communicants may be in 
what are called the orthodox churches, it tends to 
grow smaller, even to a vanishing point, in what are 
called the liberal churches. Upon this matter for 
years now my own ministerial mind has been much 
exercised, and I can state almost in a word the con- 
clusion which I seem to have reached. We want a 
church so simply, naturally Christian, that the young 
may belong to it, the young in the years of opening 
manhood and womanhood, and we want to see that 
they belong to it and are placed in it with due and 
fitting outward observance, their own confirmation 
of their baptism. There is a tide in the religious 
life for whose rising we are to watch. Make your 
church not merely a choice collection of eminent 
saints, but a school of Christian disciples, and re- 
member, in holding your examinations for admission, 
that the point is to see not how many can be kept 



HISTORICAL SERMONS. 67 

out, but how many may be regarded as fitted to get 
good from its loving discipline. My chief injunction 
to a successor in this ministerial office would be : 
Stand in the ways with the simplest of church cove- 
nants, like this of ours, ih your hands, and invite the 
young to come into the Christian congregation as 
into a home whose light and love and memories and 
examples shall make their every-day lives purer and 
happier by an inward and divine necessity, and be- 
cause they are enriched and enlarged, even as by the 
spirit of Christ. No outward crowd any longer 
clamors and petitions for church-membership as a 
baptismal right ; but there are hundreds and thou- 
sands who need to have the meaning of their bap- 
tism interpreted to them, and to be taught the blessed 
truth that they are indeed, as they have been sol- 
emnly declared to be, God's children in a world 
which is his as much as any other world created or 
to be created. We need the old, earnest, serious 
understanding of church-membership, and yet we 
must cherish the thought that Christianity was made 
for man, and is never rightly understood or preached 
when it fails to get a response from the youthful and 
glad as well as from the aged and stricken, from 
those who are seeking what is best and most pre- 
cious as well as from those who are burdened with 
sin and sorrow. 

In Salem, in the year 1638, "one Oliver his wife," 
so we read, "was imprisoned for holding amongst 
other opinions which were considered very danger- 



68 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTOxN. 

ous, that all who dwell in the same town and will 
profess their faith in Christ Jesus ought to be re- 
ceived to the sacraments there, and that she was 
persuaded that, if Paul were at Salem, he would 
call all the inhabitants there saints." Some five 
years after the poor woman was whipped, and had 
a cleft stick put on her tongue for half an hour, 
for reproaching the elders ; but did she not tell the 
truth about the Church which ought to be and shall 
be, — the church, not of human selection, but of 
divine election, — the sons and daughters of God, of 
whom saith the Prophet, " And thy children shall all 
be taught of God, and great shall be the peace of 
thy children " ? 




FOURTH HOUSE OF WORSHIP. 

CHAUNCY PLACE. 
1808. 



A 



SERMON 



PREACHED TO 



THE FIRST CHURCH, 

ON THE 

Close of i\}tix Seconti Centurg, 

29 AUGUST, 1830. 



BY N. L. FROTHINGHAM. 



SERMON. 



" Remember the days of old, consider the years of many 

GENERATIONS." — Deut. xxxii. 7. 
" I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient 

times." — Ps. Ixxvii. 5. 

'T^HE life of man is measured by years. The 
more lengthened existence of communities 
and states is counted in generations. Is it fanciful 
to think that in estimating the comparative dura- 
tion of each, a twelvemonth in one corresponds to 
an ace in the other.'' Threescore and ten revolu- 
tions of the sun fix the limits that leave to the 
individual " no portion," or but a feeble one, " in 
anything that is done under" its beams. And 
threescore and ten of those periods, which are 
ordinarily computed to mark the successions of 
human life, are old age for a nation. None of the 
kingdoms of Europe yet approach that longevity 
of two thousand years, and most of them are youth- 
ful in comparison with it. If it has ever been 
surpassed by any of the ancient nations of Asia 
or Egypt, it was only to see their institutions over- 
thrown, their memory a ruin, their very speech 



SERMON. 



71 



changed, and the stranger and conqueror pressing 
upon the remnants of their faculties and the decrepi- 
tude of their strength. Thus it is that governments 
and states and tribes flourish and pass away, as well 
as the mortal man who mixes for a while his tran- 
sient interests with them. The very land that we 
till seems to demand occasional respites of desola- 
tion. The great globe itself, if we may credit the 
testimonies of history and the analogies of reason, 
must have its alternations of ruin. For everything 
there is a longer or shorter period, which we may 
grow wiser by contemplating. What is gone is 
always full of instruction for those who are them- 
selves hastening away. Moses, who lived in the 
early twilight of the world, commanded his tribes to 
" remember the years of many generations ; " and 
David, with whom the fame of his nation began, em- 
ployed himself in considering the " days of ancient 
times." 

When we think of the broad circles of empire that 
have spread themselves and faded over the earth, we 
may be ready to look on the space which the annals 
of our own community include as a span. But in 
truth the two hundred years that it has already stood 
are by no means to be accounted an inconsiderable 
time. Especially when we reflect that it did not 
grow up, like most others, from obscure and slow 
beginnings, but started at once into active, indepen- 
dent, intelligent life, — feeble, indeed, at first, through 
the smallness of its numbers, but with nothing about 



72 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

it of the ignorance of childhood or the rashness of 
youth. It was commenced on this side of the sea, 
with all the improvement that ages had been working 
out on the other. Without anything of the thought- 
lessness of young and wild adventure, it was com- 
posed of as sober and resolute men as ever staked 
their all on a holy enterprise. Without anything of 
fiction wrapt about its origin, its first words were 
those of a noble history, and the eyes of the most 
cultivated portions of Europe watched its growth 
here in the wilderness. One is impatient of those 
celebrators of the national independence who speak 
as if our civil existence were scarcely to be dated 
earlier than the declaration of that event. It is as if 
one should date the deep foundation of England 
herself from her last revolution, which would make 
her half a century younger than we. The freest 
spirits of the freest nation then known founded the 
colony; and not a man of them but stood as erect 
on his rights at his first landing as any of his 
descendants have done since. Those rights were 
never relinquished for a moment. The fact is de- 
serving of more attention than it has received, that 
in 1630 the full privileges of as free a charter as 
could then be framed by those who gave up all for 
that freedom were publicly transferred from the soil 
of Great Britain to these poor shores in the West. 
The liberty that was not permitted there was by 
some strange concurrence, which we hardly know 
how to explain, solemnly guaranteed here. And 



SERMON. 



/ 3 



here it came to dwell. And from that day to this, 
in all the ways of prudence and bravery, it has been 
steadily maintained. 

Two hundred years of such maturity are not to be 
spoken of lightly. It is a space bearing a good pro- 
portion to that which gave the most refined people 
of antiquity all their glories of letters and art, and to 
that which meted out to the mightiest people that 
have yet risen on earth the most valuable portions of 
their dominion. With us every year has been a 
narrative of plain but vigorous life ; while a great 
part of the history of nations is usually the fable 
of their beginnings or the tedious tragedy of their 
decline. 

I am dwelling, perhaps, too long on a train of re- 
flections which every one who feels his New England 
parentage, having once begun it, must find it hard 
to quit. As a child, however, of that honorable and 
pious descent, I must yet add one thought more ta 
so long a preface, and bless God that our land was 
marked out as by a special Providence for the resi- 
dence of just such men as came to look over the 
waters after its rugged but safe asylum. Before they 
established themselves in it, it was sought by the 
ambitious, that here they might set up their arbitrary 
establishments; but these soon went back to climates 
more congenial to the growth of temporal dominion 
and ecclesiastical pride. It was sought by the ad- 
venturous and licentious ; but it repelled those with 
the rough touch of its deprivations and dangers. 



74 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

The counsels of princes, the plans of the worldly- 
wise, the efforts of the daring, all came to nothing 
as they turned towards it. It was reserved in the 
decrees of the Almighty for those only who were sus- 
tained by an inflexible faith, and thus fitted for the 
great work which they were commissioned to ac- 
complish. We may dissent from some of the points 
of that faith. We may wonder at some of them. 
But it gave those who held it a strength that no 
earthly principle could inspire. It gave them the 
success for which every earthly motive was found 
vain. It helped them sow the land, when it was but 
just cleared of its forests, with those pregnant hopes 
of learning and religion, which no zeal short of their 
own could have made to grow. We are sitting un- 
der the blessed shade, into which those germs have 
spread ; and it would ill become us to find fault with 
imperfections, without which the great work itself 
might possibly have been left imperfect. A severe 
education is often seen to be favorable to the indi- 
vidual man, leaving on his mind an abiding and 
salutary impression, a strong bent towards the 
right, while it permits him to forget something 
of the rudiments of its first instructions. The 
case is not otherwise with states. Wlio can doubt 
that New England owes the elements of her pres- 
ent character, and the institutions that make her 
peculiarly what she is, to the discipline of her Pu- 
ritan ancestry, — though it may sometimes have 
seemed stern like her coasts, and gloomy as her 



SERMON. 75 

early fortunes ? Who can endure to think that, 
instead of the deep principles of those thoughtful 
men, we might have had laid as the foundations 
of the country the rotten theories of irreligion and 
misrule, or any of the shallow devices of modern 
innovators ? 

Two centuries have passed since this church was 
gathered, — the first of the long line of churches in 
this populous town. Its records are older than those 
of the town itself, since it was formed before this 
peninsula was settled, or even the name now given 
to it was thought of. It was gathered under cir- 
cumstances of peculiar affliction, when disease was 
thinning the little company, that had scarcely yet re- 
covered themselves from the weariness of the sea 
and the desolateness of their new condition. In the 
spirit of a considerate and courageous sorrow, its 
first preparations were devoutly arranged. With 
solemn but humble forms were those preparations 
completed. Its first members belonged to a class 
of people whom a high foreign authority has called 
" the most remarkable body of men which the world 
has ever produced." ^ The first name on its list is 
that of one who, in any age, might be held up as 
a model of a magistrate and a Christian man. Its 
first covenant is distinguished only by its superior 
dignity and simplicity from those which are most 
commended at the present day. Its first assembly 
was under the shade of a tree on the other side of 

^ Edinburgh Review, xlii. T,j7y ^.rt. Milton. 



76 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Charles River. Its first house of worship was on this 
side of the stream, and was built with mud walls and 
a roof of straw. These were lowly accommodations. 
Yet they corresponded well enough, not only with 
their situation at the time, but with their sober de- 
votions at any time. For they had so long felt their 
minds constrained under high ceilings of chiselled 
stone, that they were glad of the poorest building 
which they could raise for themselves, and content 
with the freedom even of the tall forests which 
" were God s first temples." They had learned, too, 
from their own excited minds an independence of 
all outward state in religion. They needed none of 
it in their intense communion with Heaven. Their 
feeling of God's presence was too strong upon them 
to admit of being aided by any magnificence that 
belonged to this world. 

Such were the beginnings of this church. They 
might seem melancholy to us if they were not so 
noble. They were like the beginning of the gospel 
itself, — a voice in the wilderness, — a cry to repent, 
but at the same time a promise of a kingdom of God 
at hand. If the history of the church had not been 
written already by one of its ministers,^ this would 
not be the place to enter into any minute details 
concerning its progress. They might have been 
looked for a hundred years ago, when the first cen- 
tury sermon was preached by Mr. Foxcroft, whom 
several of my respected hearers can well remember, 

1 The Rev. William Emerson. 



SERMON. 77 

— SO fast do our generations crowd on one another. 
They were not entered into then, and they could 
now be made neither interesting nor manageable. 
In the place of them, I will ask your attention to a 
few general results, drawn from a comparison be- 
tween the elder days of the church and the present ; 
with the view of showing that while we should 
honor what was well done then, we should be grate- 
ful for our own superior privileges. It is natural 
to celebrate the past. I bless God that we find so 
much there to applaud and be grateful for. I would 
that the praise were tenfold louder and more sincere 
among us than it is, so far as filial respect, and the 
most sacred remembrances, and the love of liberty 
and truth demand it. But let the admiration be dis- 
criminating. I would distinguish between the times 
themselves and the men who lived in those times. 
It is a distinction that is of the utmost consequence, 
though perpetually overlooked by panegyrists on one 
hand and cavillers on the other. We have to learn 
more reverence perhaps than we yet feel for our 
fathers and their compeers, — men whose most elo- 
quent praises have after all been spoken on the other 
side of the Atlantic. But it is quite another thing 
to applaud the state of opinions and manners at that 
period, — and a further extravagance still to depreci- 
ate our own as contrary to them. The cry of degen- 
eracy and defection has become too old to be worth 
attending to. It was uttered from the beginning 
in various tones of lamentation. " Either I am in 



78 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

an apoplexy," writes one,^ within seventeen years of 
Governor Winthrop's landing, " or that man is in a 
lethargy who doth not now sensibly feel the heavens 
trembline over his head and the earth under his feet ; 
so that little light of comfort or counsel is left to the 
sons of men." Mr. Foxcroft in his century sermon 
bewails " the shaking times," as he calls them, in 
which he was born, and expresses his fears lest 
" Boston should have the reproachful name of Lost 
Town bestowed on it." Disregarding all these com- 
plaints and evil prophecies, whether of ancient or re- 
cent date, and in open dissent from those who would 
bring us back to the religious opinions and usages 
which we have forsaken, I will lay my finger on a 
few points, which will prove to us that some advance- 
ment has been made in the course of two hundred 
years. " Remember," say some, " the days of old, 
consider the years of many generations," — as if our 
only safety was in the imitation of them. We reply, 
" I have considered the days of old, the years of an- 
cient times," and let us see to what purpose. 

I. Two hundred years ago there prevailed a set of 
scriptural impressions and interpretations, which our 
better light has exposed, but which gave a strong 
shade to opinions on government as well as faith, and 
threw a sort of spectral influence on the ordinary 
affairs of life. Rational and philosophical views of 
the Bible were unknown in the land ; and yet the 
Bible was compelled to speak in all natural and un- 

1 Ward's " Simple Cobbler of Aggawam." 



SERMON. 79 

natural ways on every subject of concern. The code 
of Moses was thought to be a fit pattern for modern 
legislation ; and the project of a theocracy, which is, 
in plainer language, an administration of priests, was 
seriously contemplated. The tribes of Judah and 
Israel were supposed to offer suitable examples for 
those who had crossed into a new world. The 
oracles of the prophets were believed to be predic- 
tions of what the passing and the coming days were 
to fulfil. Questions of sudden emergency, and dif- 
ficulties that belonged to their peculiar situation, were 
settled by a reference to the Book of Kings or the 
Song of Solomon. I find the famous Mr. Cotton^ 
tasking his acute mind to prove that a liturgy is a 
breach of the second commandment, which forbids 
the making of any graven image. Happy would it 
have been if such ideas of the Scriptures had been 
confined to verbal disputes, and outward usages, and 
designs that were never executed. But they had not 
always so innocent an ending. It was unluckily 
written in the Pentateuch, " Thou shalt not suffer a 
witch to live." This law was enforced only fifteen 
years after the founding of the colony ; and in the 
same century broke out that fatal infatuation, which 
we are unable to think of without horror and grief. 
Nothing would be more unjust than to charge this 
foolish cruelty upon our ancestors, as if the delusion 
was peculiarly theirs. I charge it against the super- 
stitiousness of the age. The executions in England 

1 Way of the Churches of Christ in New England, 71. 



8o FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

for that imaginary crime were very far more numer- 
ous than here ; and it was punished with death by 
the authority of the most enhghtened tribunals 
in Europe. It is not a hundred years since the 
presbytery at Edinburgh denounced the repeal of 
the penal laws against witchcraft as a national sin. 
And even this tenacity of error does not seem to me 
more strange than the words of a Scottish historian^ 
published but the other day, who suggests that there 
might have been " an actual appropriation of that 
mysterious agency, which Scripture assures us did 
once exist, and which no equal authority has ever 
proved to be extinguished." It was not so slowly 
that the men of New England learned wisdom. 

II. Two hundred years ago the civil and religious 
interests of men were entangled together. The 
church stretched out its hand to the sword of the 
magistracy, and the magistracy girt its brows with 
the terrors of the church. This was no invention of 
our fathers. It was what they had received from 
theirs. They only did not wholly disclaim it. It was 
an impurity and an abuse, which their spirit of liberty, 
as it refined itself, was gradually to throw off. But 
there it was, — the occasion of perpetual disorders 
in their infant community. Theological disputes were 
accounted matters for civil jurisdiction. The gov- 
ernor and the pastor were seen either to withstand one 
another, or to join in the exercise of a common sway. 

1 Grahame's History of the Rise and Progress of the United States of 
North America, vol. i. 465. 



SERMON. 8l 

The church, while it excluded from its communion 
all but the regenerate, — an exclusion which is still 
considered by some to have been a very scriptural 
and praiseworthy practice, — excluded also all but 
its members from the freedom of the political body. 
The rest had not the common rights of citizenship. 
This tyranny was indeed early resisted, and one 
synod after another decided in favor of their dis- 
franchised brethren. I wish I could add that the 
First Church was found true on that occasion to 
the true cause. I wish there did not lie upon her 
the reproach of bitter dealings with her more liberal 
sister, the Old South, who nobly went off from her 
at that time for liberty's sake. 

III. Two hundred years ago there was no such 
thing as toleration. In practice it was unknown, 
save of a few mild spirits ; and even in open theory 
it was condemned and derided. " He that is will- 
ing," says a writer whom I have already quoted,^ 
"to tolerate any religion or discrepant way of re- 
ligion, besides his own, either doubts of his own, or 
is not sincere in it. There is no truth but one, and 
of the persecution of true religion and toleration of 
false, the last is far the worst. It is said that men 
ought to have liberty of conscience, and that it is 
persecution to debar them of it. I can rather stand 
amazed than reply to this. It is an astonishment 
that the brains of men should be parboiled in such 
impious ignorance." Another thus expresses him- 

1 Ward. 
6 



82 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

self :^ " The outcry of some is for liberty of con- 
science. This is the great Diana of the libertines 
of this age. I look upon toleration as the first-born 
of all iniquities. If it should be brought forth 
among us, you may call it Gad, a troop cometh, a 
troop of all manner of abominations." Most of the 
Puritans of this period thought it impossible that dif- 
ferent sects should exist peaceably together in the 
same community ; and even when oppressed them- 
selves they exclaimed against universal toleration. 
But in this they only took part in a general senti- 
ment. Even the philosophic Lord Bacon thought 
that uniformity in religious sentiment and worship 
was essential to the support of government. Who 
had taught them any better ? Where were they to 
find any worthier example t Was not the whole 
world in arms against those principles, which they 
had come into a desert to enjoy } And was nothing 
to be allowed for men who had made such dreary 
sacrifices ? They had fled to the ends of the world, 
that they might have a way of their own. They 
invited none to share their " poor cottages in the 
wilderness," where they were " overshadowed," as 
their own beautiful language ran, " with the spirit of 
supplication." They warned all who were not par- 
takers of their own faith and feeling, to spare their 
tranquillity and leave them to their retreat. We can- 
not surely confound such men with vulgar persecu- 

1 President Oakes's Century Sermon, 1673. Similar opinions might be 
quoted from Higginson's Election Sermon, 1663; Shepard's Election Sermon, 
1672 ; Cotton's " Bloody Tenent Washed," etc. 



SERMON. 83 

tors. This would be injustice in any. It would be 
irreverence and ingratitude in us. Look at Europe 
as it was at that moment, instead of inveiehinof 
against them. To say nothing of the circumstances 
that banished them from the land which they never 
ceased to love, James the First had, but a little while 
before, burnt at the stake two of his subjects for 
Arianism ; and it was a considerable time afterwards 
that the great national edict of toleration in France 
was revoked by a bigoted and profligate king. Do 
not make it too hard against them, that they were 
not further in advance of the rest of mankind, — that 
they had not yet attained where none were perfect, — 
that they sometimes exercised, out of a deep love for 
what they deemed to be God's truth and their own 
right, a small measure of that power which was em- 
ployed elsewhere in the full insolence of despotism, 
by the cunning, the conceited, the ambitious, and 
the dissolute. 

We have gone back two hundred years. Change 
now the point of view. Come forward a short 
space. Suppose the last of those self-denying men 
who planted this colony to have rested from their 
labors. See what was accomplished in the course of 
that single generation, and you will need nothing 
beside for their defence or their eulogy. They had 
begun to build their own ships for their increasing- 
commerce. They had stamped coin, which has 
always been classed among the exercises of sove- 
reignty. They had founded a university. They had 



84 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

seen many of the most Illustrious names in the 
mother land, even those of prelates and noblemen, 
associated with their spreading improvements. They 
left all the interests of the country flourishing. Bos- 
ton alone contained fifteen hundred families; and in- 
telligent strangers who visited the provinces of New 
England went back to tell of a state of order and 
enterprise, of refinement and hospitality, equal to 
their own, beyond the western waters. When was 
ever a generation that did so much ? They have 
left their monuments in the effects which they 
wrought, in the institutions which they bequeathed, 
in the prosperity which they established, in the 
characters which they bore, in the examples which 
they have made immortal. 

I cannot conclude this discourse, already perhaps 
too long, without calling up the memories of those 
who have been ministering servants to our church in 
the days that are gone. There will be time for little 
more than to speak out their names, as their solemn 
train passes before us. The first is Wilson. Asso- 
ciated with nobles in the English realm, he came 
here for religion's sake, to be installed teacher of a 
church in the open air, just two hundred years ago. 
Blessings on his meek head ! His zeal had no mix- 
ture of sternness with it. He was a pattern of wis- 
dom and gentleness, in an age that had great need 
of it all. The next is John Cotton. His fame was 
great in the colleges and congregations of his own 
country, before he crossed over to this. Boston re- 



SERMON. 85 

celved its name from the Eno^lish town in Lincoln- 
shire where he formerly ministered, and our institu- 
tions may ahiiost be said to have been moulded by 
his extraordinary influence. Honor to so learned 
and commanding: a man ! thoucrh the venerable 
sweetness of his older colleague has more charms 
for me than either his learning or command. Some 
of his posterity are still worshippers with us, and the 
children of his present successor are his direct de- 
scendants in the seventh generation. Norton. He 
had neither the soft, healing dispositions of the first, 
nor the bright gifts of the second. But his attain- 
ments entitled him to a better fate than to be thrown 
into the whirl of political intrigues and disappoint- 
ments, and to die of a broken heart. Davenport, 
the patriarch of New Haven, and of such celebrity as 
to be invited, together with Cotton, to the great as- 
sembly of divines at Westminster. He gave to this 
place but the feeble residue of his old age, and that 
little was tormented with disputes, which his best 
days would probably have done nothing to reconcile. 
Let him pass in peace. Allen. His protracted 
ministry seems to have been rather occupied with 
silent usefulness than adorned wath any renown. 
Oxenbridge, on the contrary, was honored during a 
short career. He was struck with death in the very 
act of conducting the services of the Lord's house. 
MooDEY was the first child of New England who 
officiated in this church. His benevolent and in- 
trepid mind should now be commemorated the 



86 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

rather because the sour prejudices of his own times 
did him wrong. Bailey and Wadsworth and 
Bridge were men of a faithful heart, whom no 
body of Christian behevers on earth need have been 
ashamed to acknowledge. The labors of the dili- 
gent FoxcROFT offer much to be commended ; 
though we may well account it a serious exception 
to the praise, that he admired the fanaticism of 
Whitefield and censured the liberality of Tillotson. 
With Chauncy a new era commenced. He viewed' 
religion with naked human eyes, and not in unreal 
visions, or through the discolored and distorting 
medium of technical systems. He looked upon the 
world, and was not afraid to bind up his hopes in 
the common hopes of mankind. He looked up to 
Heaven, and its throne was to him filled with the un- 
clouded radiancy of love. He beheld the churches 
agitated with a storm of religious excitement, and 
he rebuked both the wands and the sea. None of 
you need to be reminded of the excellent graces of 
Clarke. The regrets for him are still warm, though 
his amiable features have long been dust. He had 
the virtues of Wilson with a better creed, and like 
Oxenbridge, he w-as smitten, as he stood in the pul- 
pit, by the angel of death. Emerson follows next. 
There are many affectionate recollections among you 
of his zeal as a minister and his extraordinary social 
worth. You rejoiced but for a little w^hile in his mild 
lio-lit. He was cut off in the midst of his active and 
devoted course, but he has left the characters of his 



SERMON. ^J 

children to praise him in the gate. Then, like the 
shadow that his early promise has become, — scarcely 
seen but to depart, scarcely speaking among you but 
to expire, — passes the friendly Abbott, and closes 
the line. 

There is one more name, however, to which I can- 
not refrain from giving utterance. It is that of him 
who was all but yours, and who would have been 
wholly so, perhaps, if one less worthy had not been 
called to occupy his place, — it is McKean. I see in 
your eyes how well you remember that ardent and 
noble spirit. He was the friend of us all ; and I am 
sure there is no one here who, if called by any cir- 
cumstances to the island where he died, would not 
inquire for the place where he rests, and piously re- 
move from his green grave any coarse growths that 
might make it unsightly. 

Brethren, I have endeavored to fulfil a duty which, 
at the return of a new century, seems to be demanded 
by the living and the dead. I have " considered the 
days of old, the years of ancient times." But who 
can confine his imagination to the past .? A hun- 
dred years more ! What have they in reserve to 
show after their revolution is ended ? Nothing for 
us. They will scarcely find the children of our chil- 
dren alive. But may they have blessings to shower 
down on the Church of God, whose date is not meas- 
ured by centuries, and on the immortal cause of 
human good ! 




THIRD HOUSE OF WORSHIP: "THE OLD BRICK.' 

Site of Joy's Building, Washington Street. 
1713- 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES 

BY THE 

FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON, 

UPON THE 

ffi^ompletiotx of iTiiia ^tjunlirEti anti iFiftg ^cars, 
THURSDAY, NOV. i8, 1880. 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 



THE beautiful house of worship of the First Church 
was decorated for the Festival with simple, but striking 
and appropriate ornaments. Upon the front of the spire 
on Berkeley Street, before it reached the height of the 
roof, was a large draped surface, covered with American 
and British flags arranged in glories, in a bordering of blue 
bunting festooned with red and white rosettes. Across the 
centre was the inscription " 1630 to 1880," and beneath 
hung the old Pine Tree flag of Massachusetts. In the 
interior of the church were two lofty banners, one on each 
side of the chancel. The one on the left bore, in red Gothic 
letters on a gold-colored ground, the names of the minis- 
ters of the church, as follows: — 

John Wilson 1630 to 1667 

John Cotton 1633 to 1652 

John Norton 1656 to 1663 

John Davenport 1668 to 1670 

James Allen 1668 to 1710 

John Oxenbridge 1670 to 1674 

Joshua Moody 1684 to 1697 

John Bailey 1693 to 1697 

Benjamin Wadsworth 1696 to 1737 

Thomas Bridge 1705 to 1715 

Thomas Foxcroft 171 7 to 1769 

Charles Chauncy, D.D 172710 1787 

John Clark, D.D 177810 1798 

William Emerson 179910 181 1 

John L. Abbot 1813 to 1814 

N. L. Frothingham, D.D 181 5 to 1850 

RuFus Ellis, D.D 1853 



92 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

The other, on the right, bore in similar colors the following 
legend : — 

From IVintkrop's " History of A^ew England^ 

"July 5, 1632. The pastor of Boston, Mr. Wilson, a very sin- 
cere, holy man, . . . told the Governor that, before he was re- 
solved to come into this country, he dreamed he was here, and 
that he saw a church arise out of the earth, which grew up and 
became a marvellous, goodly church." 

The front of the pulpit and choir was adorned with 
wreaths of glossy green leaves and scarlet passion-flowers. 
About the chancel was a profusion of tropical and flower- 
ing plants in pots, making a little forest of bright colors 
around the desk of the speakers. At the right of the 
pulpit the communion-table was spread with the old his- 
torical pieces of church silver, all of it given by former 
ministers, deacons, and church-members, with the tall, em- 
bossed cup, the gift of Governor John W'inthrop, conspicu- 
ous in the centre. 

In the evening the figures " 1630-1880" were shown in 
gas jets above the main entrance. The chapel was deco- 
rated with wreaths of green leaves and with flowers, and 
on its walls were hung the portraits of many of the former 
ministers, as follows : — 

John Wilson . . . belonging to the Mass. Historical Society. 

John Cotton ... „ „ Hon. R. C. Winthrop. 

John Davenport . . „ „ Yale College. 

Benjamin Wadsworth ,, „ Harvard University. 

John Clark, D.D. . . „ „ Miss Esther C. Mack, Salem. 

William Emerson . . „ ,, Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

N. L. Frothingham, D.D. „ „ Mrs. N. D. Hubbard. 

And a fine marble bust of Dr. RuFUS Ellis, belonging to 
the society, occupied an appropriate place on its pedestal. 
There were also hung on the walls other portraits, as fol- 
lows : — 

Gov. John Winthrop . . . belonging to Hon. R. C. Winthrop. 
Gov. Thomas Dudley ... „ „ Hon. R. C. Winthrop. 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 93 

The other pictures exhibited were — 

A view of the head of State Street, belonging to the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, painted by James B. Marston, April 19, 1801, 
showing the First " Old Brick " Church (the third building of 
the society). 

A recent ideal picture belonging to Williams and Everett, painted 
by W. F. Halsall, representing the arrival of Winthrop's fleet in 
Boston Harbor. 

An engraving of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770, showing the 
Old State House and the First Church. [The frame of this 
engraxing formerly belonged to Francis Rotch, Esq., owner of 
the tea-ships, December, 1773.] 

A small painting of the " Old Brick " Church that stood in Corn- 
hill, now \Vashington Street. 

A photograph of the church in Chauncy Place. 

An engraving of the great Church of St. Botolph's, in Boston, 
England. 

A photograph of the Unitarian Chapel in Boston, England. 

A photograph of the tower of St. Botolph's Church, in Boston, 
England. 

There were executed for this occasion four large draw- 
ings of the several churches of the society, from the first 
rude structure with mud walls and a thatched roof to the 
present beautiful edifice; and a drawing of the Church of 
St. Botolph in Boston, England, all of which were also 
hung upon the walls. The pictures not belonging to the 
society were kindly loaned by their owners. 

The massive ancient communion plate was appropri- 
ately displayed in a large glass case. 

The committee were much assisted in their preparations 
for the celebration by Messrs. Ware and Van Brunt, the 
architects of the church. 

Thursday had been selected amongst the week-days for 
these services, in remembrance of the Thursday Lecture, 
which had been brought over from the English Boston, 
and had been preached in First Church even to the 



94 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

present generation, though its course is run and it is no 
longer amongst the hving. It was the eighteenth day of 
November, not without clouds and rain, followed, however, 
by a clear cold evening sky. Two of the clock was the 
hour assigned for the afternoon exercises, and by that time 
a large company gathered, and the church was filled with 
the congregation and their guests. The chancel had been 
expanded into a platform, which was occupied by the 
speakers and by Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a son of a 
former pastor, with Mr. Justin VVinsor and Mr. Marshall 
P. Wilder, the Rev. Drs. A. P. Peabody, Frederic H. 
Hedge, and Edward Everett Hale. The services were 
somewhat longer than had been provided for, but were 
followed with deep interest by the audience to their 
close, a little before six o'clock. A large number of our 
guests remained with us through the evening, and took part 
with the society in the further observance of the day in the 
church and in the chapel, with music and a social reunion. 

The services opened with an Organ Voluntary. 

The Address of Welcome was then pronounced by 
Hon. Nathaniel Silsbee, as follows : — 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — We are met together 
to-day to commemorate the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the establishment of this the " First 
Church of Christ in Boston," by men few in num- 
ber, who came from across the ocean to found both 
civil and religious liberty. I have been requested 
to say to you the introductory words of welcome, in 
the place of the president of your Festival Com- 
mittee, Mr. Nathaniel Thayer, to whose liberality 
in connection with this church we are so much in- 
debted, and whose absence we all regret. I now, 
therefore, in the name of the committee, of your 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 



95 



minister, and of the parish, bid you each and all a 
cordial welcome. The exercises will be conducted 
by your minister, and, in addition to the religious 
services, you will be addressed by eloquent men 
familiar with the history of our Puritan fathers^ 
and of those who have endeavored to walk in their 
footsteps. May we not hope that the large number 
of this congregation who have gone before us, and 
whom we believe to be now in the spirit land, will 
join in communion with us at this time } I ask 
your attention to your minister, the Rev. Dr. Rufus 
Ellis. 

The minister of the church then offered the followincf 
prayer : — 

God over all, forever blessed ! we thank thee for 
this day and hour; help us to bring unto thee 
hearts of gratitude, and to pray unto thee a faithful 
prayer. In the midst of years which have been 
crowned with thy goodness we praise thy mercy 
and thy truth. We consider the generations of 
old, and our hearts say unto us. Did ever any trust 
in thee and were confounded ? We thank thee 
for good examples and brave testimonies, for the 
faith which wrought righteousness and obtained 
promises, for those who, being dead, yet speak. 
Fathers and children, and children's children, in the 
wilderness and in the place of habitations, in the 
body and out of the body, thou hast made us to 
be one family in thee, and thy care and love for 



96 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

thy household cannot be told. In this hour of 
gratitude and solemn joy may the meditation of our 
hearts and the answer of our lips be from the Al- 
mighty and the All-merciful. Gathered into thy 
presence and taught by thy Spirit, may our hearts 
burn with a deeper love and a new desire to see the 
coming of thy kingdom. Make this church a 
glorious church ; may our eyes see the King in his 
beauty and follow him in his faithfulness. Show 
unto us more clearly the way of his divine life, and 
guide and uphold us in his blessed footsteps. We 
pray for all that love thee ; we pray that all may 
learn to love thee, and that, loving thee, they may 
love one another even as Christ loved us. O God 
and Father of our -Lord Jesus! fashion our whole 
being into his dear likeness, and help us with one 
heart and one voice to pray as he hath taught us : 
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy 
name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in 
earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily 
bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
those that trespass against us. And lead us not 
into temptation ; but deliver us from evil. For 
thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, 
for ever and ever. Amen. 

Rev. Joseph T. Duryea, D.D., minister of the Central 
Church, then read the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle 
to the Corinthians : — 

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have 
not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 97 

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all 
mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that 
I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though 
I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth 
me nothing. 

Charity suffereth long, and is kind ; charity envieth not ; charity 
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. 

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not 
easily provoked, thinketh no evil ; 

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; 

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, en- 
dureth all things. 

Charity never faileth : but whether there be prophecies, they 
shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether 
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in 
part shall be done away. 

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, 
I thought as a child : but when I became a man, I put away child- 
ish things. 

For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face : 
now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am 
known. 

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three ; but the great- 
est of these is charity. 

The reading was followed by the singing of the Te Deum 
in G by the choir of the church. 

The minister then spoke as follows : — 

" In this month of November, two hundred and fifty years 
ago, the fathers and mothers of this congregation were 
looking forward not without a reasonable anxiety, and yet 
with a deep trust, to their first winter in their new and 
almost wilderness home. To eyes that look upon the out- 
ward appearance, it was the day of small things; to Him 
who looks not upon the outward appearance, it was the day 

7 



98 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

of great things, great faith, great hope, great love. We, 
who in the good providence of God have come into their 
places and entered into their labors, are not willing that 
their confidence should be disappointed, and we have called 
together our kindred and our neighbors to rejoice with us 
and by seasonable speech to build us up to the measure 
and stature of our high trust. They have kindly answered 
our call, and it is my pleasant duty not to detain you with 
any words of my own or to repeat what I have already 
said to the congregation; but to pronounce the names of 
some who are dear and familiar to you all, and with you to 
wait upon their words. 

" Happily I can call upon one who is in every sense my 
brother, to tell you the story of this church. I have heard 
of a very idle son of a very industrious father who was in 
the habit of saying to his neighbors, ' You shall hardly 
find two men who have done as much work as my father 
and myself; ' and I am sure that you will agree with me 
that it would be impossible to find two men in the Com- 
monwealth who know as much about the history of our 
church and State as my brother and myself Let me ask 
the Rev. Dr. GEORGE E. Ellis to address you." 



ADDRESS OF DR. GEORGE E. ELLIS. 

We are commemorating the two hundred and 
fiftieth year of the gathering and planting, by 
exiles from England, of the First Church of 
Christ on the viro-in soil of Boston. The First 
Church, — a simple and august title, as distinctive 
of primacy and of a fruitful parentage. Most 
fitting it is that those " men and women " who 
compose the special present membership of this 
church should on this occasion be merged in this 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 99 

larger company, comprehensive and representative 
as it is of the offshoots and outgoings, in manifold 
variety, of the original plant, in scion or graft, with 
life from the vital sap. The old church welcomes 
us all to-day, as to a home without walls. Still the 
invitation which summons us is that of the First 
Church, meeting in the fifth of its successive houses 
of worship, — one for each of its half-centuries. A 
question, leading deeper than we can now follow 
it, naturally comes to us with this occasion and 
observance. What is the bond of succession and 
continuity, not to use the strong word identity, 
which connects this existing religious fellowship, in 
covenant, pastorate, and membership, in symbol, in 
purpose, and in fact, with that ancient wilderness 
church ? There are heirlooms, objects of outw^ard 
sense, not without real sisrnificance of a rigfhtful in- 
heritance. The original records of covenant and 
membership are still here, unbroken, continuous, in 
the distinctive qualities of church registers. These 
sacramental vessels, beginning with the cup of com- 
munion, the gift of the ever-honored and revered 
first Governor and first signer of the covenant, and 
gathering their additions, as votive offerings in life 
or death from members in their generations, have 
passed from hand to hand and lip to lip during the 
months of all these years. The transfers and title- 
deeds of sites of land sold or purchased for suc- 
cessive edifices, legally recorded, assure the rights 
of the present proprietors in the property of their 



lOO FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

predecessors. These, however, are relics and tokens 
of things of sense, temporal and material. Through 
eight generations of our fleeting race on earth has 
been transmitted an inheritance in interests, ex- 
periences, and hopes, which we trust still has its 
witness here, concerned with what is spiritual, pass- 
ing within the veil. The covenant stained into that 
illuminated window, so calmly and sweetly worded 
in our dear old English tongue, reminds us of a 
more serious trust which has passed down through 
this church of Christ. Are those whose inheritance 
it is, bound by any living tie of sympathy, fidelity, 
purpose of heart, consecrating aim in life, to those 
who entered into that covenant '? 

While so many are to speak to you, I must re- 
strict myself to a single theme from a most fruitful 
subject for retrospect and thought. Yet, when we 
ask how this church of to-day assures its relation 
of succession to that original First Church, we are 
reminded that all that is of real import in the 
question carries us back into a matter of larger 
interest. Those who first entered into church cov- 
enant here were not waifs, orphans from any pre- 
vious Christian heritage. They called themselves 
members of the Church of England, and claimed 
that they were transplanting a root of it in the 
wilderness. None the less they originated and in- 
troduced here a method in church organization, a 
mode and order of worship, and an administration 
of discipline divergent from those of the Church 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. lOI 

of England at the date of their coming. Their 
system, soon called Congregationalism, is substan- 
tially that adopted and approved by all Christian 
fellowships in this country, save the prelatical ones, 
Roman and Anglican. Why this change, this 
novelty, this breach or schism, which, it is asserted 
by many, put our fathers and ourselves outside the 
true fold of Christ ? The question is made to be a 
grave one, as it concerns their rectitude of avowal 
and conduct. The pastors and chief members of 
the church had been, till their coming hither, in 
communion, by a qualified conformity, with the 
Church of England ; and they afterwards, on 
marked occasions, refused to regret or renounce 
that communion. They insisted, in life and death, 
that they were children and nurslings of that fold. 
As the ocean-shores of their beloved home were 
fadinof on their view from the deck of their 
vessel, with aching hearts and tearful eyes they 
tenderly apostrophized their "dear Mother Church," 
tracing to it their gospel nurture, and asking that 
the prayers of its assemblies might span the seas 
for a benediction on their " poor cottages in the 
wilderness." Yet, seemingly as if rejoicing to be 
rid of some of its accustomed ways and usages, 
they here turned their faces from it, and, as if by 
silent accord, spontaneously, without debate, ex- 
planation, or vindication, they dropped the surplice 
and the service-book, the altar-rail and ritual, the 
chant and the responses, and adopted other ways of 



I02 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

their own in their Sunday assembly. The Common 
Prayer Book, litanies and ceremonies, vestry-men 
and wardens, were disused. Not a line or word 
of explanation, if ever such was written, remains to 
us, accounting for this spontaneous, unchallenged 
abandonment of a wonted method, and the adop- 
tion of- a new one. Why was this } 

Let me note here a fact curious and significant. 
The very rarest volume — so rare that I know not 
of a single copy — in all our treasured repositories, 
shelves, and cabinets of relics, books, and papers, 
gathered from the homes of our first generation 
here, is the Book of Common Prayer, of previous 
or contemporary editions. We do not find it in 
the very minute inventories of the estates of the 
earliest comers here ; when probated, these inven- 
tories often containing lists of books by titles. 
Neither the Library of the Historical Society nor 
the Prince Library, amid the mass of tracts and 
volumes of the first exiles, has in keeping a copy 
of the Prayer-book. What is especially noteworthy, 
we have the inventory, and a list of the books — 
nearly two hundred — left by William Blackstone, 
probated in the year of his death, one year before 
his house and its contents were burned by the 
Indians. He was the first English resident on 
this peninsula, and also in orders as a minister of 
the Church of England. Many of his books are 
classed by size, without titles, and the Prayer-book 
may have been among them ; but it is not men- 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 103 

tioned, though we note on the Hst " 3 Bibles." 
Governor Winthrop gave a copy of the book to 
the infant college, lost when the precious old li- 
brary was burned, Jan. 24, 1764. The governor, 
however, mentions a copy of the book belonging 
to his son, which came to a humiliating fate. It 
seems not to have been lying, as we should say, on 
the centre-table of a home, nor on a shelf with 
the Bible, nor kept at hand in a bed-chamber, but 
in a place " where was corn of divers sorts." " The 
Greek Testament, the Psalms, and the Common 
Praver were bound too-ether." The son " found the 
Common Prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, 
and not any of the two other touched." The hon- 
ored governor notes this phenomenon as " a thing 
worthy of observation," without any dismay or re- 
gret, rather as if impressed by it as a special rebuk- 
ing Providence. The editor of Winthrop suggests 
as an explanation of the prodigy, that " the mice, 
not liking psalmody, and not understanding Greek, 
took their food from another part of the volume." 
But a kindlier solution offers: The well-thumbed 
pages of the liturgy, long and devoutly used by 
somebody, had given a savory flavor to its leaves, 
which the mice appreciated.^ 

But what became of all the copies of the Book of 

1 It is not literally the fact that " every leaf " of the Prayer-book was thus 
nibbled, as the governor says ; for the mice stopped their ravages at the 
" Order for the Visitation of the Sick." The Hon. Robert C. Winthrop has 
in his possession the identical volume, as also another copy of the Common 
Prayer, bound in with the Bible of Adam Winthrop, the father of the 
governor. 



I04 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Common Prayer once in the possession and in the 
use of these exile members of the Church of Eno-- 
land ? The book seems to have been as rare here 
as the holly and the mistletoe. Had they no room 
for it in their sea-chests, no place for it in their 
hearts.? Did they leave it in their old pews for 
those who were to worship in the calm and beauty 
of the dear home shrines ? Another striking fact 
of like significance presents itself to notice. In 
all that are left to us of the letters, the diaries, 
the sermons, and other writings of those first com- 
ers, we should look in vain for a single quotation 
of sentence or phrase from the felicitous and beauti- 
ful devotional terms and expressions in prayer and 
exhortation and collect in the liturgy, — a usage so 
familiar with those who now worship with its pre- 
cious help. 

How are we to account for this spontaneous con- 
sent to lay aside, this instant disuse of, the Church 
manual ? The explanation is at hand for one versed 
in the history of those exiles at home and on their 
coming here. The first and leading members gath- 
ered in this church had in their old homes been in 
most intimate, tender, and heart-knitting relations 
before their exile, held together by a fervent re- 
ligious communion. Thus they laid their plans, 
strengthened their purposes, toned their spirits in 
sympathy and resolve for their stern enterprise. In 
these confidential meetings and conferences, a book- 
service would have been cold, constrained, and for- 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 



105 



mal to them, as in like circumstances it always 
will be. Spontaneous, heart-prompted, heart-worded 
prayers, with exhortations, w'ere the natural method of 
their piety. Thus, in free, fervent breathings-forth, 
to which the Spirit gave tone and language, they 
were knit in fellowship for trial and sacrifice. They 
reverted to the simple, primitive, apostolic method and 
usage of the first companies of Christians, of which 
they read in the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles, 
before form, ceremonial, or ritual had come in as in 
after times. Thus, free prayer became endeared to 
them for its range and pitch and compass and fer- 
vor, and adaptation to moods and circumstances. 
When they left their homes and shrines, nature and 
use — the experience of its blessing and strength for 
them — made it their joy and solace. It is to be re- 
membered that when they left their parish churches, 
some of them having already disused form and cere- 
monial, the Service-book had not become to them the 
fond and almost idolized object, bedew^ed and con- 
secrated by tender associations for those devoutly 
educated by it in the last two and a half centuries. 
Those of us not wonted to its use and esteem can- 
not at times but stand amazed at the intensity of 
regard now lavished upon the book, the dread and 
jealousy of any tentative dealing with it, felt by its 
fondest votaries. We have seen more than once a 
large convention of bishops, ministers, and lay dele- 
gates of our Episcopal denomination debating a 
proposed change in it of a word or a phrase, and 



I06 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

then rejecting it as if it concerned a displacement 
of the stars of heaven. 

Our exiles had not so bedewed that book with 
heart affections. It was to them, under the chang- 
ing forms of much modification and construction, a 
comparatively recent fabric of man's ingenuity, pref- 
erence, and judgment, translated, selected, and dis- 
posed from various materials of devotion. In their 
view, the best portions of the book were its lessons 
from the Scriptures, harmed rather than helped for 
them by a forced and arbitrary arrangement by an 
ecclesiastical year of festivals, fasts, and saints' days. 
They preferred to select their Scripture readings for 
themselves. They felt rather the restraints and stiff 
formalities of the Service-book than its helps. It is 
wholly unlikely that on their passage hither they 
once had recourse to it on deck or in the cabin, in 
their daily worship or their Lord's Day exercises. 
So, without the Servdce-book, free of it, not caring 
for it, they instituted here their social religious as- 
sembling. The truth, simple and without just of- 
fence to any one, may be spoken. Besides their 
scruples against conformity with a ceremonial for 
which they found no warrant in the Christian Scrip- 
tures, the Prayer-book, rich as it was in chant and 
collect, did not contain what they wanted. They 
could not find within it so readily as they found 
within their own burdened and longing hearts the 
matter of devotion and petition which answered to 
their condition, their straits and perils, their fervors 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 107 

and dreads and ecstasies of experience in dismay or 
trust. The Service-book, a copy in the hand of each 
worshipper, trained, as the phrase is, "in finding the 
place," and knowing when to stand, sit, or kneel, so 
aptly suited to the calm and decorum and routine 
uniformity of peaceful Sabbaths and well-furnished 
churches, with chant and organ, surplice and chan- 
cel and choir, did not meet the exigencies of wilder- 
ness worship. The fact is a significant one, and 
need not, in the recognition of it, involve any invid- 
ious debating of the merits and uses of liturgies. 
Renewals of the same experience are confessedly 
met by Episcopal missionaries held to the use of 
the book on our own frontiers, in sparse settlements, 
and to groups of chance attendants summoned for 
social worship. Within this very month we have 
found the foremost minister of that communion in 
its full convention pleading earnestly for liberty, — 
on some occasions for free prayer and a more flexi- 
ble service. Overwhelmingly was the petition re- 
jected, the decision being that in every public service 
of the church its ministers may offer no prayer other 
than in the words of the book. 

When, therefore, our exiles here, in disusing the 
book and all the forms of ritual and prelacy, claimed 
lovingly still to be in the lineage and membership of 
their mother church, the explanation is obvious. The 
Church of England was dear to them, as it stood 
for the Church of Christ. Other than that it was 
to them of no account. They had in thought the 



I08 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

divine pattern, deposit, and endowment, not the hu- 
man mechanism and administration of that Church. 
Through it the verities and sanctities of the Christian 
faith, with all its spiritual vitality, had come to them, 
baptizing their infancy and imparting to them its 
sacramental blessing. From the doctrine of the 
church, in believing and holy living, they in no 
whit departed. They had labored and suffered 
while at home to advance the reformation of the 
nation's church, which, having been in progress for 
nearly a century, had been arbitrarily arrested in its 
working back to its scriptural pattern by State pol- 
icy and priestly devices. They did not imagine that 
their heritage in their mother church was perilled by 
their rejection of some of the human inventions still 
retained in its ceremonial and discipline, any more 
than it was by the common repudiation of distinc- 
tive Roman errors. Such graces and gifts as might 
come from a special method of ordination to the 
ministry the first pastors and teachers of the exiles 
had received in England, and it was not thought of 
sufficient importance that their successors should 
cross the ocean to obtain them. At any rate, the 
plea of the exiles that their disuse of form and cere- 
mony did not sever their tie to their mother church 
could be answered only by what would be from their 
descendants but a harsh and ill judgment of the 
Church of England. In effect it would be that the 
signal quality, warrant, and glory of that church 
rested in the mechanism of its service and ceremo- 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 



109 



nial, disposed by clerical, parliamentary, and royal 
devices, rather than in its divine deposit of the sim- 
ple gospel. It was with the Christian vine, and not 
with its trellises, that our exiles knit in their trust and 
life. That vine had kept its sap and vigor through 
centuries of Roman domination and corruption, and 
they believed that with a further purging it would 
bring forth more fruit. 

The Puritan mode of worship and service, severely 
naked and unwinning as it was, met the occasion 
and the time in its strain upon the austere and in- 
tense fervors of spirit in thofe exiles. But with 
softening and enriching experiences, it proved blank 
and drear. It was suited to men stern and earnest 
in their pitch and style of piety, — hardly nutritive, 
winning, or wreathed enough for women, and inef- 
fective, juiceless, and repulsive for children. The 
" Milk for Babes," provided by the first teacher, 
John Cotton, was highly concentrated, and not easily 
assimilated for nutriment. 

More upbuilding to those exiles than the reading 
of the Service-book was an exercise which their 
mother church had not provided for them, but 
which, with the sermon, and more than the sermon, 
was their nutriment in their solemnities. This was 
" the opening," or the exposition, with comment, of 
a passage of Scripture, still after the New Testament 
pattern. Hundreds there were of the easy-going 
vicars and curates of English parishes who would 
have been utterly incapable of meeting the high 



no FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

demands and standard of our exiles for that ser- 
vice. On the title-page of the English Bible is in- 
scribed, "Appointed to be read in Churches." This 
required the reading of a " Proper Lesson " from the 
desk. To the Puritan this was like offerino: some 
rich fruit to the eye or hand without indulging the 
palate with its juice or flavor. " Dumb reading," 
that was called. The Puritan wished the condiment 
squeezed and pressed, for a lengthened, lingering 
repast. Verse by verse, with light from the Hebrew 
and Greek originals, with comparison and illustra- 
tion by other texts, with exposition and improve- 
ment, would the teacher penetrate to and open the 
mines of wealth in the holy pages. Men and women 
listened intently, with each thumb and finger in- 
serted between the leaves, to follow the illuminating 
way. John Cotton was midway on a second ex- 
position of the whole Bible when his life closed. 

So the instincts and cravings of their own hearts, 
their circumstances and conditions, guided them to 
the use of methods best suited to the quality of 
their piety, while there was always a scrupulous care 
to follow the way of Scripture. If we could enter 
thoroughly into their confidence, we should find that 
things which they disused had been abused, like the 
Lord's Prayer as the reiterated Pater-noster, and 
that what to us looks like self-will was to them the 
constraint of conscience. So far from supposing 
that they were alienating themselves from their 
Christian heritage, they devoutly believed that they 



COMjMEMORATIVE services. Ill 

were following the pattern of the primitive Apos- 
tolic Church, after the simplicity of Christ. 

I may not open the manifold leadings of the ques- 
tion as to the rightful passing of the title and quality, 
the honor and dignity, of that wilderness fellowship 
to those who now constitute this First Church. Yet, 
where so much has changed, the substance abides ; 
the Scriptures, the Christian doctrine and rule of 
life, still guide its services. A digest of the hun- 
dreds of thousands of sermons preached by the 
succession of its ministers, and the action of the 
members on the religious movements and measures 
of two and a half centuries here, would present, in 
fair exhibition and review, the developments and en- 
largements of our general religious history. Happily 
the church long since relaxed the inquisitorial sever- 
ity of its early discipline,, by which it held rigidly 
to account each of its covenanted or baptized mem- 
bers. Otherwise it would have to deal to-day with 
a notable company among the living constructively 
accountable to it. If words were used by their 
signification, Catholic would be the fitting epithet 
for this church now. It stands free of all sectarian 
and denominational bonds, being closest in its rela- 
tions with that unfenced brotherhood which claims 
all the liberty wherewith Christ has made his dis- 
ciples free, provided only that they are his disciples ; 
for Christ is now, as always, its Head. No ecclesi- 
astical process or tribunal can stand between its 
minister and his flock, to question his teaching or 



112 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

the tenure of his office. Acting with the freedom 
and the desire of adjustment to admitted tastes 
and needs, and the desire to get all good from all 
things, a modified Service-book has come into use 
here, not, however, with any enforcement. Those 
who worship here, in the course of a single year, 
find that, according to the preferences of the offici- 
ating minister, they engage in the original Puritan 
method of devotion, or in parts or the whole of 
the book. The question is asked. What would 
your founders say about the grandeur and artistic 
beauty of this edifice, its storied windows, its organ 
and choir, the green boughs of its Christmas service, 
the flowers of its Easter service, its furnaces, and 
its cushioned pews ? If we care to answer, we 
should say that the Puritans built the best meeting- 
house which they could ; that each renewed edifice 
improved upon the preceding one. We should point 
to the fair palaces and beautiful homes, with all their 
furnishings, and to the marts of mammon, where 
was once a wilderness ; and we should plead that 
the sanctuary may be holy, even if glorious and 
lovely. 

■ Never in all its years of life and change was this 
ancient church more vigorous and earnest and effec- 
tive in all the offices and purposes of a Christian 
church than it is to-day. Its debts are all due to 
God ; none of them to man, except for high and 
sacred service. Its peaceful relations with all other 
churches, its devout and dignified ministrations, the 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. II3 

fidelity and tenderness of its pastoral work, the un- 
obtrusiveness of its presence in any other than its 
appropriate sphere, the largeness and earnestness 
and compass of its benevolent agencies, — these 
make the present First Church the most fitting 
memorial of the fathers in the fair city once then- 
wilderness home. May its Divine Guardian lead it 
on for the centuries to come, still standing as it was 
planted,— "built upon the foundation of the apos- 
tles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the 
chief corner-stone " ! 

The minister then said : " Of the first signer of our church 
covenant and the first governor of this Commonwealth John 
Winthrop, a name ahvays to be spoken gratefully and re- 
veringly, it is recorded, April 3. 1634: 'The Governour 
went on foot to Agawam, and because the people there 
wanted a minister, spent the Sabbath with them and exer- 
cised by way of prophecy.' I cannot say that there is here 
any lack of ministers, but we have a liking in this church 
for lay preaching when we know of what sort it will be; 
and I am sure you will say that there is something in the 
doctrine of heredity when you are listening, as I need not 
ask you to do, to the Hon. ROBERT C. WiNTHROP. 

ADDRESS OF THE HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 

It is no little relief to me, ladies and gentlemen, 
to remember that, in promising to be with you here 
on this occasion, it was expressly stipulated that I 
should be held responsible for only a brief address. 
There are those around me to whom this Church 
must be peculiarly and justly precious, as being 



114 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

their own church, and the church of their fathers 
and mothers, and of all who are most dear to them. 
But I can speak under the inspiration of no such 
associations, as I look back on my own long and 
unintermitted relations to Old Trinity, and to New 
Trinity, from infancy to old age, — relations never 
more valued than at this hour. Nor can I forget 
how recently I have returned from a protracted 
session of the triennial convention of the general 
Church to which I belong, — where I was freshly 
impressed with the value of its organization, the 
charms of its liturgy, the safe anchorage of its 
creeds, and the broad range of its views and efforts. 
And yet, my friends, in face of all these associa- 
tions, and in full remembrance of all my religious 
professions and ties, I can honestly say that there 
is no connection in which I am more glad, or more 
proud, to recognize my family name distinctly in- 
scribed, than on yonder beautiful window of this 
First Boston Church. That old covenant of 1630, 
of which John Winthrop was the first signer, is one 
under which any man might well be willing to live 
and to die. For myself, certainly, I could desire to 
have lived and died under no better and no other 
covenant. And as to the old Governor himself, I 
venture to say for him, in this sixth generation, that 
he would have preferred that his name should be 
perpetuated there, rather than on a dozen statues in 
the city, or the State, or the national Capitol. Let 
my name, he would have said, be remembered, if at 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 1 15 

all, not so much for founding towns or common- 
wealths or confederations, as for bringing the gospel 
into the wilderness, and helping to advance the 
kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. All else, with 
him, was subordinate to that. 

And certainly nothing could have been more sim- 
ple, more solemn, or more comprehensive than this 
covenant, for those who wished to associate them- 
selves together in a Christian church. A recital of 
all the thirty-nine articles would have added nothing 
to its force or its felicity. I might have said thirty- 
eight articles, as our American church omitted one 
of the articles, at the same time that it so wisely 
struck out from the Prayer-book the Commination 
service and the Athanasian creed. If such a cove- 
nant were drawn up, and subscribed and entered 
into heartily here, to-day, for the first time, or in any 
part of the world, at any time, by a company of sin- 
cere and earnest believers, it could not and would 
not fail to commend itself to the respect and confi- 
dence and sympathy of all good people, let them 
belong to whatever denominational church they 
might. 

But, let me hasten to say, there were peculiar 
circumstances under which this little covenant was 
adopted two centuries and a half ago, which give 
it a significance, an impressiveness, and even a 
pathos, which can hardly be exaggerated, and which 
must never be forgotten, — least of all here on this 
occasion. 



Il6 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Let me recall for an instant the historical facts, — 
e\'en at the risk of repeating what has been said, or 
of anticipating what may be said, by others. Most 
happily the account of the signing of this covenant, 
in 1630, is preserved in all its details, as fully and 
clearly as the signing of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence in 1776, or of the credentials of tlie latest 
missionary bishop at New York last month. Those 
two original letters of Edward Winslow and Samuel 
Fuller to Governor Bradford, contained in Bradford's 
" Letter Book," — providentially rescued, eighty years 
ago, from a grocery shop in Halifax, — as well as in 
his " History of the Pilgrims," not less providentially 
discovered, twenty-five years ago, in the Bishop of 
London's library, — tell the whole story. 

The men who signed this covenant on the 30th 
of July, 1630, — after a long and perilous voyage 
across the Atlantic, — had reached the shores of 
New England about six weeks before. They had 
left homes and altars, friends and, many of them, 
their families, behind them, and had come to seek 
that civil and relisrious freedom which had been 
denied them in Old England. Meantime affliction 
and suffering had already befallen them. They 
were not, indeed, like the Pilgrims at Plymouth, 
involved, at the outset, in all the rigors of a bleak 
New England winter. The Pilgrims landed in De- 
cember, on the shortest day of the year. The 
Massachusetts colony, by a striking contrast, landed 
in June, on the very longest. But they were still 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. I 17 

without fixed habitations, — many of them encamped 
at Charlestovvn in tents and booths. It was too late 
to begin planting with any confidence of a crop on 
an untried soil, and they were still without sufiicient 
supplies of food to secure them from famine in the 
winter. Fears and sorrows were, indeed, so multi- 
plying upon them and around them, that they began 
to feel as if the Lord's hand was against them. 
Many were sick, many were dead. Governor Win- 
throp's son Henry had been drowned soon after his 
arrival. The Lady Arbella was pining at Salem 
from the results of fatigue and exposure, under which 
she was soon to sink into an unmarked grave, — to 
be followed, alas, within a single month of her own 
death, by her noble husband, Isaac Johnson, who 
" tried to live without her, liked it not, and died." 
But he was with her at Salem on the 25th of July, 
1630, and there he had received from Governor 
Winthrop, who was at Charlestown with the as- 
sistants and the Massachusetts company, a letter 
recounting their anxieties and afflictions, and de- 
siring that all at Salem and Charlestown, and every- 
where else in the colony, might hasten to humble 
themselves before God, seeking him in his ordi- 
nances, and beseeching him to withdraw his hand 
of correction from them, and to direct and establish 
them in His ways. 

Out of this letter of the governor's to Isaac John- 
son, read publicly after their Sabbath evening ex- 
ercise at Salem, and made the subject of loving 



Il8 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

consultation by Winslow and Fuller of the Pilgrim 
Fathers, as well as by the Salem church, which they 
were visiting, came the appointment of the following 
Friday (July 30) as a day of humiliation and prayer, 
and for the entering into this covenant with the 
Lord, to walk in all their ways according to the 
rules of the gospel. 

There was no Boston yet. But the day was 
to be solemnized at Salem and at Plymouth, at 
Dorchester and at Watertown, as well as by the 
Massachusetts company at Charlestown. It was 
a most memorable day in our history. All that 
there was of Massachusetts, all that there was of 
New England, was down on its knees on that 
thirtieth of July before God. Church and State, 
ministers and governors, — the whole colony, was 
assembled before the Lord, acknowledging him as 
their only refuge in tribulation, and dedicating them- 
selves to his serv'ice. We can almost hear them, in 
their little log meeting-houses, or in the larger hall 
at Charlestown, or under the branches of the 2:reat 
trees around them, rehearsing or singing some of 
the verses of that marvellous 107th Psalm, which 
seemed composed for them as much as for the chil- 
dren of Israel : " They went astray in the wilderness 
and found no city to dwell in : hungry and thirsty 
their soul fainted in them : so they cried unto the 
Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from 
their distress : He led them forth by the right way, 
that they might go to a city of habitation." That 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 119 

was the day, my friends, and those the circumstances, 
on whicli and under which yonder Httle covenant 
was proposed, prepared, and signed by the four 
representative men whose names you have embla- 
zoned on your window. 

I have but Httle doubt that Governor Winthrop 
framed that covenant. It is entirely in keeping 
with the discourse which he wrote and delivered on 
board the Arbella during his long voyage. Nor is 
it, let me add, in any degree out of keeping with his 
farewell letter to his brethren of the Church of Eng- 
land. There is not a word in it of alienation, or 
separation, or non-conformity, or of what some good 
people call schism. I do not altogether believe that 
on that thirtieth day of July the governor had any 
very distinct idea, in his own mind, to what it was 
all to lead, or what was to be the permanent organi- 
zation of religious worship in the colony he was 
founding. There was too much trouble, too much 
affliction, too much distress of all sorts, for any de- 
liberate decision on such a point. It might have 
quickened him to such a decision if he had learned, 
as possibly he may have learned, that the latest 
letters from London at that moment brought tidings 
that Laud — the great foe of Puritanism — was in 
high favor at Court, wielding all the authority of 
Primate, and that five ministers of the English 
Church had just been summoned before the High 
Commission, of whom his friend John Cotton was 
one. But it was enough for him, and for those with 



I20 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTOxN. 

him, that they needed, and must have, the comforts 
and consolations of religious association and relig- 
ious worship, and that the covenanted mercies of 
God must be invoked by humiliation and prayer. 

Meantime, beyond all doubt, whatever they may 
have intended or designed, that day, that service, 
that covenant, settled the question that Congre- 
gationalism was to be the prevailing order, and for 
a long time the only order, in early New England. 
Nor, let me add, have I ever doubted for a moment 
that Congregationalism was the best and the only 
mode of planting and propagating Christianity, in 
this part of the country, in those old Puritan times. 
But I said enough about that at Plymouth Rock, ten 
years ago, and I have nothing to add or to alter. 

Governor Winthrop was unquestionably a man 
who cared more for faith than for forms, more for 
religion than for ritual, more for prayer than for 
prayer-books, and who held Christianity to be above 
all churches. And, in that regard, there is at least 
one of his descendants who does not reverence his 
memory the less, and who humbly strives to culti- 
vate his spirit. While I can make no pretension to 
the lofty title of a Puritan myself, I may at least be 
permitted — when so many disparagements are cast 
upon that title in other quarters — to avow my 
earnest admiration for the many grand qualities 
which the Puritans displayed, here and elsewhere, 
in spite of all their faults ; and for the glorious re- 
sults they achieved for civil and religious freedom, 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 12 1 

both in New England and in Old England. " It 
was to this sect," says the historian Hume, ^' that 
the English owe the whole freedom of their consti- 
tution." " The Puritans," writes Hallam, " were the 
depositaries of the sacred fire of liberty." " The 
genius of Puritan England," says his latest and best 
biographer, "was John Milton." That is glory 
enough for them in Old England. 

And if we desire to understand what Puritanism 
has accomplished for New England, we have only 
to look for ourselves, and see what New England 
is. Not to any single, massive, material structure, 
with its hallowed crypt and splendid choir, its vaulted 
arches and long-drawn aisles and magnificent dome, 
but to countless institutions everywhere, for relig- 
ion, education, and charity, and to an intelligent, 
industrious, and free people, living and multiplying 
in the enjoyment of them all, we point proudly to- 
day, in presence of this old First Church Covenant, 
and in loving remembrance of those who signed it, 
and say, " If you seek a monument of the Puritans, 
look around you ! " 

The minister then said : " I gather from the story of our 
church that Governor Winthrop once owed his election to 
the earnest efforts of the Rev. John Wilson, who climbed a 
tree that he might be the better heard by the crowd. I can- 
not claim to have rendered any such service to our honored 
chief magistrate ; but I trust that he will none the less put 
us in his debt, as the first governor was continually wont to 
do. May I ask a word from His Excellency the Governor 
of Massachusetts?" 



122 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 



ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR LONG. 

I rise only to bring to this delightful occasion the 
greeting and kind wishes of the Commonwealth 
which shares with you the honor of the name of 
John Winthrop — at once the first governor of the 
Massachusetts Colony and chief of the founders of 
the First Church of Boston. If he were here in my 
place, what eloquent expression might he not give 
to the emotions that would stir in his heart at wit- 
nessing the changes and the progress of two centu- 
ries and a half, alike in the church he aided to found 
and in the Commonwealth that still reveres his 
memory and bears his impress ! Much as he would 
find the present minister a man after his own heart, 
he would hardly guarantee, I fear, the salary of 
Dr. Ellis as he did that of John Wilson, the 
first pastor. He might for a moment question the 
architectural elaboration and tasteful magnificence 
of this edifice, as compared with the fretwork of 
leaves and sunshine, or later the mud w^alls and 
thatched roof, under which he w^orshipped. But 
(perhaps conciliated as soon as he saw the worthy 
descendant of his own loins — who honors the ven- 
erable and illustrious name he bears more even than 
it honors him — giving the sanction of his voice 
and presence here) anon his own great nature would 
take in and expand to the grandeur of all this growth, 
the seed of which he helped to plant. It would not 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 123 

pain him, I am sure, that Church and State, over both 
which his influence was once so great, have severed 
connection and are independent of each other. He 
would not think Mr. Peters, a minister of Salem, 
was far out of the way, who, in 1636, "rebuked the 
governour and plainly insinuated that if governours 
would concern themselves only with the things of 
Caesar, the things of God would be more quiet and 
prosperous." He would certainly admit that the 
Church is better employed than when it was rent 
with schisms over technical points of doctrine, or 
when it wrangled over mere theological terms that 
have long since been as lifeless as the dead leaves 
at which you may look as a student, but which fall 
to dust if you touch them, and are only good for 
fertilizing new crops. 

The fact is, these anniversary celebrations — 
which are now so frequent that our wittiest poet 
has said that if we had a patron saint, it would be 
St. Anniversary — are valuable, not so much because 
we reproduce the past, which in its grim reality is 
not always attractive, but because we idealize the 
past, and so inspire the present and the future. 
Remembering that first solemn covenant of this 
church, which had but this one requirement, " To 
walk in all our ways according to the rule of the 
gospel, and in all sincere conformity to his holy 
ordinances, and in mutual love and respect to each 
other so near as God shall give us grace," Governor 
Winthrop would find assurance that his church to- 



124 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

day Is all that was best in it two hundred and fifty 
years ago. And if, passing from these portals, he 
should walk the streets of Boston, or go over the 
Commonwealth, it would rejoice him to find a better 
Massachusetts than his own, the wilderness blossom- 
ing like the rose, thrift, education, and plenty every- 
where, and these shores an asylum not alone for a 
Puritan congregation in search of fi-eer range, but 
for all the children of men who seek larger liberty 
and a better hope. What is true of the Church is 
true also of the Commonwealth. The best thing 
in each is its own orowth. The Commonwealth is 
to-day all that was best in the Massachusetts Colony 
of tw^o hundred and fifty years ago, expanded from 
that day of small things to a grander growth, but 
its veins still quick with the same blood, and its 
advance inspired by the same high ideals of Chris- 
tian virtue, education, and liberty, which have char- 
acterized it more and more fi'om the beginning on, 
but which have no more striking illustration than 
in the history and in the men — the Winthrops, the 
Cottons, the Chauncys, the Emersons — of the First 
Church of Boston. To that church, in grateful 
recognition of its contribution to the causes of re- 
ligion, of good morals, of public virtue, of education 
and patriotism, on this its two hundred and fiftieth 
birthday, hoping that it is in the beginning of its 
usefulness, and that two hundred and fifty years 
hence as good words may be said of us as we can 
now^ say of our fathers, I bring the acknowledgments 
of the Commonwealth. 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 



125 



The minister then said : " After the excellent service 
rendered by him to the city of Boston on the 17th of 
September, his Honor the Mayor may well claim exemp- 
tion from added duty in that way; but the church as well 
as the city asks his presence when she celebrates her 
anniversary, and it is not his habit to decline any reason- 
able call. I ask a word from his Honor the Mayor of 
Boston." 

ADDRESS OF MAYOR PRINCE. 

The Committee of the First Church of Boston, 
charged with the arrangements of the commemora- 
tive services in honor of its completion of two hun- 
dred and fifty years of life, have kindly asked me to 
be present and participate in these services because 
of my official position as mayor of the city. It gives 
me great pleasure to do so. No citizen of Boston 
can fail to be deeply interested in this occasion. 
No one who feels as he should in respect to our 
civic history can fail of gratulation and sympathy 
for the cause of this ancient societ}^ Its origin and 
its whole history are closely interwoven with the 
origin and history of Boston. The annals could 
not be written without giving the story of the First 
Church. When we look back and recall the cir- 
cumstances under which this society was organized, 
when we summon before our mental gaze its heroic 
founders, — Winthrop and Dudley and Johnson and 
Wilson and Bradstreet, — and all those grand old 
Puritans who left country and home and friends, 
the endearing scenes of childhood, the sacred graves 



126 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

of their fathers, the charms and attractions of civil- 
ized life, for a barren wilderness, inhabited only by 
savage beasts and men more savage, that they might 
worship God in peace and according to the dictates 
of conscience ; when we remember the hardships, 
dangers, and suffering of the long voyage across the 
stormy Atlantic ; when we recall their sublime for- 
titude, their serene patience, their indomitable perse- 
verance, their sincerity, piety, and faith, — we cannot 
but feel for them admiration mingled with awe, and 
a reverence which approaches veneration. It will 
be noted that the first act of the Pilgrims as a body, 
upon landing here, was to found a church. Before 
they made homes for themselves, before they erected 
dwellings, they organized and arranged to carry out 
the leading object of their emigration, the free wor- 
ship of God, and this society was gathered. At 
first the cono^reoation assembled and held relisfious 
exercises beneath the spreading branches of an oak- 
tree. The quiet and peace of the then untenanted 
land, the solemn calm of undisturbed nature in those 
first days of colonial life, would seem to have been 
in full harmony with the grave Puritan character, 
and such place of worship, such a temple, well fitted 
to the exalted nature of Puritan devotion. 

The first meeting-house was of the simplest form 
and rudest construction. It had no vaulted roof, no 
groined arches, no lofty spires, no cathedral mag- 
nificence, none of the pomp and glory of ancient or 
modern church architecture. Its walls were built 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 1 27 

of mud, as the Governor has just said, its roof was 
merely thatched, but the prayers which ascended 
therefrom were as sincere and devout as any that 
the costliest minster or cathedral ever sent forth, 
and doubtless were as acceptable. That first gath- 
ering did more than establish a CJmrch, — it estab- 
lished a State. It arranged all the civil as well as 
the ecclesiastical concerns of the infant colony. It 
regulated all the domestic matters of the society, or 
" congregation," as the covenanters styled them- 
selves. No one had voice or vote in the early days 
touching public affairs, or in whatever affected pub- 
lic interests ; no one could make the law, adjudi- 
cate it, or execute it, who was not a church-member, 
and none could be a church-member whose daily 
life was not clean, decent, and holy. The order 
admitting none to the freedom of the body politic 
but such as were church-members was adopted in 
1 63 1, and continued in force until the dissolution of 
the government in 1684, although probably the 
order was not rigidly enforced for some years pre- 
vious to that date. It has been charged that this 
exercise of power was oppressive, and that the Pil- 
grims showed in their conduct here the same intol- 
erance which drove themselves from the mother 
country. This may perhaps be true in some re- 
spects, but I think it may be demonstrated that the 
action of the fathers under the circumstances was 
justifiable because necessary for the maintenance of 
their cause. They had made great sacrifices for 



128 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

religious liberty, and they were determined that it 
should not be jeoparded, but protected by every 
means against every possible danger. Religious 
toleration was to be delayed to a more convenient 
season, when Puritan principles would become so 
firmly rooted as to defy the assault of all enemies. 
Although the occasion does not allow the discussion 
of the question, I have no doubt that Congregation- 
alism was the only church form which could have 
maintained the cause of the colonists, subdued the 
wilderness, the savages and all the opponents of 
Puritanism, ecclesiastical and lay, and laid the foun- 
dations upon which was subsequently erected con- 
stitutional liberty, civil and religious. If the English 
Church just as it existed in England had been planted 
here by the emigrants, and it had been firmly estab- 
lished, the political and social condition of this 
Commonwealth and the whole country might have, 
and probably would have been, wholly different from 
what it is now. Congregationalism means civil as 
well as religious liberty : it is of the very essence of 
freedom and independence. When we remember 
that there was no religious liberty either in England 
or in any other country when Puritanism arose, that 
after the Reformation the power exercised by the 
Pope was transferred to the temporal monarch, who 
was the absolute ruler over the consciences of the 
people, so that they must believe whatever he should 
direct in respect to religion (which control, King 
Henry said, in his letter touching the provisions of 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. I 29 

the Act of Supremacy, " was no more than what all 
Christian princes in former times assumed to them- 
selves in their own dominions "), we can understand 
how little religious liberty there was when the Puri- 
tans emigrated, and we can also understand what 
an important step was taken when they broke loose 
from the powers controlling the church and asserted 
the principles of Congregationalism. The assertion 
of these principles must have created as much as- 
tonishment in the mother country as, years after- 
wards, the denial by the Puritan descendants of the 
right of taxation without representation. Fortu- 
nately, however, the colonists were too few in num- 
bers, and the government of England too much 
occupied with domestic matters, to pay much atten- 
tion to any declaration of church rights in places so 
far off, by parties so insignificant every way as these 
non-conformists. The Puritans were for relioious 
liberty, and on this account they w^ere the advocates 
of civil liberty, since civil liberty must first exist as 
the basis of religious liberty. 

All honor to the Pilgrim Founders of the First 
Church ! We prove the solidity and completeness 
of their work by its durability. It has survived 
perils and schisms and enemies of every character. 
Its influence can never be wholly set forth or shown. 
We trace its effect everywhere in the religious, social, 
and political opinions and institutions of the country. 
We owe to the declaration so briefly sketched in the 
simple covenant under which this church was gath- 

9 



130 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

ered much of that cathoHcity of spirit which now 
pervades all religious sects, and that general recog- 
nition of our common humanity which makes us, in 
the words of the covenant, " entertain mutual love 
and respect to each other," and moves us to be in- 
terested in whatever concerns our race. We owe to 
it that steadiness of faith with which New England 
has ever resisted the materialism which would de- 
stroy the spiritual nature of the soul, and that severe 
strength of intellect which rejects the rationalism 
which would deny to us inspiration. We owe to it 
the fuller development of those great qualities which 
have distinguished the Puritan character, and fitted 
our fathers and their descendants for the great work, 
political and social, they were called to perform. 
Wisely the Pilgrims came here to establish the prin- 
ciples set forth in the covenant. They could never 
have found a fitting field for such purpose in the old 
country. There not only the hostility of govern- 
ment, but the opinions, prejudices, habits, and tra- 
ditions of the people would have walled them in so 
completely that no expansion or growth would have 
been possible. A new and unpeopled country, where 
all was free and unfettered as Nature made it, was 
necessary for the planting and the harvesting. Puri- 
tanism first developed in its full proportions here 
in Boston, and to-day still affects the character and 
habits of our people, influences their thought and 
controls their action to an extent not entirely recog- 
nized despite the great changes of time and circum- 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 131 

stances. It was recently observed by one of the 
New York papers, that Boston cannot long expect 
to maintain its prominent position among the cities 
of the country ; that she cannot hope to have the 
same influence in the future which she has had in 
the past ; that she must henceforth yield the lead to 
communities actuated by other and broader ideas : 
but I think we may dismiss all fears in this respect 
while the spirit of Puritanism yet lingers with us, 
to animate, invigorate, and guide our citizens, to 
stimulate habits of industry and perseverance, to 
foster the love of work, to maintain the desire 
to reform, improve, and elevate. The Puritan has 
been reproached for wanting those qualities which 
are the grace of private life, and attach men to each 
other. He is charged with that austerity which 
hates even respectable amusements and pleasures, 
with being " sour-visaged," There may be more or 
less of truth in all this ; but acidity is not without its 
value, for the sour leaven ferments the wheat, and 
thus makes the wholesome bread, which is the staff 
of life. May we long retain the leaven of Puri- 
tanism ! 

I congratulate the society on possessing this 
beautiful house of worship. During its long life 
of two hundred and fifty years it has occupied four 
different locations and five different edifices, each 
one more costly than the last, its fortunes advancing 
with those of the city. All its history has been illus- 
trious by devotion to the purposes for which it was 



132 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

organized, and by zealous advocacy of the cause to 
which it was consecrated. Its work has been and 
is now being successfully performed. Its long roll 
of ministers has no name not honored and revered 
for fidelity to duty, for piety and the practice as well 
as the preaching of the Christian virtues. Let us 
hope that it will continue to prosper in the centuries 
which are to come as in the centuries that have 
passed. 

After the singing of the Jubilate in B, the minister said : 
" The old Church of St. Botolph in Boston, England, owes 
to our late parishioner, Edward Everett, more than to any 
other man, the restoration of its chapel. To a son of Ed- 
ward Everett we owe the earnest proposal out of which 
sprang this fifth house of worship, our St. Botolph's, — the 
realization, is it not, of John Wilson's beautiful vision, of 
which the banner on my left reminds us. It was eminently 
fit that descendants of John Cotton should be foremost in 
both these enterprises. And you will be glad to know 
that the son of Mr. Edward Everett, who is at once child 
of the congregation, member of the church, teacher and 
minister, has brought to us a Poem with which to grace 
our anniversary. I ask your attention to Dr. WiLLIAM 
Everett." 

cotton in the pulpit at st. mary's. 

"Mather's Magnalia," Book III. p. i6. 

Where the chalky heights of England melt into her dreary fen, 
Springs an ancient fount of learning, Cambridge, nurse of mighty 

men : 
Clustering spires and vaulted portals, velvet lawns to catch the sun, 
Plashing conduits, cloistered arches, courts revealing, one by one, 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 



^33 



Halls on halls and cells uncounted, where for many a rolling year, 
All the noisy world excluded, Granta spreads her goodly cheer ; 
Gathering idle monks by thousands, sunk in learned sloth and ease, 
Heedless while outside their brothers faint with strife on earth and 

seas. 
Hush, vain babbler ! when did England battle with ancestral 

wrong 
And from Cambridge came no champion, bold and gentle, wise and 

strong ? 
When the roses' thorns were tearing through the darkness right and 

left, 
And the nation's crested leaders one by one in gore were reft. 
Pure and clear her beacon streaming lit the path to new renown. 
When the scholar's cap should lord it o'er the prince's bloodstained 

crown. 
When the friars of Rome gave order " Bind in chains the Word of 

God," 
Cambridge pealed her trump, and straightway snapped the foul 

enchanter's rod ! 
When o'er truth's new sun an instant bigots drew again the cloud, 
Oxford fires saw Cambridge martyrs tread the way like monarchs 

proud ; 
And returning glory found her wing her eaglets for their flight, 
Sing in Spenser's lute of wonder, gaze with Bacon's prophet sight. 
Listen, ye who love our Boston, how in Cambridge spake of yore, 
He who brought that name of beauty to the Massachusetts shore. 
Sunday morning ! Tower and steeple, cliime confusing sweet 

with chime. 
Call all Cambridge out to worship, in the hot-souled Stuart time. 
Through St. Mary's dark-browed portal see the motley gownsmen 

press. 
Blue and sable, white and scarlet, passions varied as their dress. 
Now the pulpit rules the nation ; Roman rostra never saw 
Crowds so bent to catch each echo, fired with frenzy, dumb with awe. 
As the Stuarts' England gathered, week by week, intent to hear 
Puritan or prelate searching all their souls with sacred fear. 
Nor since Ridley freed his spirit was St. Mary's thronged as now. 
Ne'er was expectation seated keener on each scholar's brow. 



134 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Boston sends again her vicar, Cotton ; still our hearts retain 
Memory of his rich oration, sweeter than an organ's strain ; 
Golden from the vaults of learning, lustrous with the gems of wit, 
Quaint conceits, and glowing pictures, richly woven, closely knit. 
Many a time and oft we hummed him, till St. Mary's hummed 

again 
Like the Granta's roar in springtime, swirling o'er the affrighted fen. 
When such preaching charms us, vainly London's playhouse calls 

to see 
Massinger's grim dens of horror, Fletcher's rosy halls of glee. 

Scarcely from the white-robed trebles dies the psalm upon the air, 
When o'er all the preacher rises lor the ancient bidding prayer ; 
Bids them pray for all in honor, king and noble, knight and priest, 
That the strength and hope of England may be hallowed and in- 
creased ; 
Bids them pray for all in Cambridge, blood and bone of Church 

and State, 
Every teacher, every pupil, every college, small and great ; 
" And as bound in private duty I request your prayers as well 
For our Protestant foundation. College of Emmanuel." 
Then, as with the Paternoster all the prayers in one are said, 
Raised is every cap, and buried in its square each gownsman's 

head. 
Now they settle on their cushions waiting for the rich repast 
That .shall wake applause for Cotton loud as when they hummed 

him last. 
Then, as though the sultry noontide felt its clouds by lightning rent. 
Leaps the text, the Baptist's warning, one short, dreadful word, 

'' Repent ! " 
Aye, " Repent ! " no gorgeous fabric, quaint conceit or wit is there, 
Classic tale or strain poetic, sweetly floating on the air ; 
But Jehovah's barbed arrow, flashing from his servant's string, 
Piercing every sluggish conscience with its unrelenting sting ! 
All the wrong that England suffers, cankered church and court 

corrupt. 
Finds its tawdry mantle shrivelled by that preacher's word abrupt. 
All the sin that reigns unfettered, all the blood to heaven that cries, 
That stern prophet's fixed index pomts to their unwilling eyes. 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 135 

" Think not, ye that sit so careless, God hath left his house alone ! 
Think not, ye that soil the sceptre, blood for blood shall not atone. 
Vain the trump that felled the Popish fortress, vain the martyr's 

doom. 
If the Lambeth finger bind us heavier than the hand of Rome. 
Aye, repent ! or if in England Pharaoh harden yet his heart, 
God shall bid his outraged Israel from the faithless land depart ; 
O'er a wilder sea than Edom's lovelier Jordans roll their streams ; 
On a fairer Zion's summit, lo, a statelier temple gleams ! 
First to you the word was spoken ; but since ye refuse to learn, 
England brands herself unworthy, to the Gentiles, lo, we turn." 

O'er the crowd the preacher gazes rapt, as when on Mars's height 
Saul of Tarsus looked unflinching up to Pallas' temple white : 
From the black and scarlet gownsmen comes no loud approving 

hum ; 
Stern resentment knits their forehead, sharp contrition holds them 

dumb. 
Go thy ways, thou daring Cotton ; Cambridge asks no word of 

thine ; 
Sunk in learned ease compliant, well content with Rimmon's shrine ; 
Leave thy Gothic halls by Granta, leave St. Botolph's lofty tower ; 
Set those names across the ocean, here where Laud hath lost his 

power ; 
And thy faithful word forever finds at length its due applause 
In the hum of freeborn millions, ruled by Boston's gentle laws. 

The minister said: "The churches of Massachusetts in 
the former days recognized, in what they called the Cor- 
poration, — that is, the Corporation of Harvard College, — 
a right of eminent domain, and that it was their duty, 
in case a minister was needed for tlie presidency, to sur- 
render him upon the instant for the office, as befell this 
church in the selection of Mr. Wadsworth. The Corpora- 
tion comes no longer upon that errand. Indeed, I am almost 
persuaded that to be a Congregational minister would be 
a disqualification for the highest office in their gift. But 
the President of the College does sometimes honor us with 
his presence ; only when he comes he asks not us, but ours. 



136 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

But he is welcome upon any errand ; and should he ask 
you now, as he will be very likely to do, to found a John 
Cotton Professorship of Christian Theology, I trust that 
you will at once subscribe the needful amount. Let me 
introduce to you the President of Harvard University." 



ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT CHARLES W. ELIOT. 

Looking back with grave satisfaction over the 
long, continuous life of this church, and of its kin- 
dred churches, do we not survey the very springs 
and sources of the peculiar character of the New 
England people ? Do we not clearly see whence 
this people has come ? Only the more instant be- 
comes that question which of late years has been 
much in all our hearts, — whither is this people 
going? There cannot be many persons in this 
company who have not already said to themselves 
at this two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, Will 
the First Church of Boston have a five hundredth 
anniversary? or a four hundredth? I invite your 
attention very briefly to three reasons for indulging 
the confident expectation that it will. 

I remark, first, that the instinct of worship is a 
universal instinct of the race, — an instinct which 
civilization refines and exalts, but has no tendency 
to extinguish. The religious sentiment has always 
been, and still is, the strongest power in the world, 
— making war and peace, resisting vice, establishing 
and overthrowing governments, fostering democracy, 
destroying slavery, preserving learning, building ca- 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 



'^Z7 



thedrals, creating literature, and inspiring oratory, 
music, and art. Unless we can count on the per- 
manence of this religious quality or faculty in man, 
we cannot count upon the permanence of any of his 
attributes. Yet modern science teaches that race- 
qualities change so slowly that the ordinary divi- 
sions of time into years and centuries are not fitted 
to express the rate of change. 

It is hardly necessary to say that rapid change of 
theological opinion may, and often does, go on from 
generation to generation without producing any 
effect upon the sentiments of religion, or upon the 
real functions of a religious organization. The doc- 
trines or dogmas taught now in this church bear but 
a faint resemblance to those of the seventeenth cen- 
tury; but the main objects of the church are, and 
will ever be, the same that they were in 1630, — 
namely, to worship God with prayer and praise, to 
teach men their duty and urge them to do it, and to 
carry their thoughts out of the monotonous round 
of their daily lives, beyond the sea, above the sky, 
to the dwelling-place of the Most High. Benjamin 
Wadsworth, who left the pastorate of this church to 
encounter many hardships and trials as President of 
Harvard College, held some theological opinions 
which are not current in these days. Thus, in a 
sermon preached just after the First Church was 
burnt, in 171 1, he says very simply: " 'T is of the 
mere undeserved mercy of God that we have not all 
of us been roaring in the unquenchable flames of 



138 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

hell long ago, for 't is no more than our sins have 
justly deserved." And again, in a sermon entitled 
" The Gospel not opposed but by the Devil and 
Men's Lusts," he gravely remarks that " Nothing is 
more trratinor, cutting^, and enrawinof to the Devil 
than to have the gospel faithfully preached to men." 
Doubtless this hearty belief in the unpleasantness 
of the sensations which faithful preaching inflicted 
upon the enemy of mankind was an effective in- 
centive to many a worthy minister. But when Dr. 
Wads worth, holding these now obsolete notions, 
came to the practical matter of advising parents 
how to bring up their children, as he did in his 
sermon entitled " The Saint's Prayer to Escape 
Temptations," he gave advice good for all time, 
which the latest President of Harvard College will 
gladly adopt as his own: as, for example, — teach 
them the Scriptures ; charge them to live soberly, 
righteously, and godliiy ; endeavor the preventing 
of idleness, pride, envy, malice, or any vice what- 
soever ; teach them good manners (a civil, kind, 
handsome, and courteous behavior) ; render them 
truly serviceable in this world, and so dispose of 
them in trade or business, and in marriage, as 
that they may be least liable to temptations, and 
may probably be most furthered in virtue and 
piety. 

Let us then settle down upon an abiding faith 
that the instinct of worship is an indestructible 
element in man's nature, and that the religious 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 139 

and ethical sentiments of mankind, which have 
survived all the physiological, psychological, social, 
and political changes to which the race has been 
subjected, will exhibit no less vitality in the future 
than they have in the past. 

In the second place, I wish to point out that the 
principle of associated action for the promotion 
of a common object has been wonderfully de- 
veloped in this country and in England during 
the present century. Manufactures are carried on, 
goods and i^assengers are transported, money is 
lent, colonies are founded, hospitals, schools, and 
libraries are maintained, by associations of men 
who combine for one defined object, and employ 
paid servants to do the common work. There is 
hardly a conceivable philanthropic enterprise which 
is not already the field of some benevolent society. 
This facility of association being one of the chief 
characteristics of our time, and a church having 
become under the laws only an association of like- 
minded men and women for the satisfaction of 
their religious needs and the furtherance of good 
works, it is inconceivable that the principle of as- 
sociation, which is proving so valuable in every 
other field of human activity, should fail to work 
well when applied, as it is in every American 
Protestant church, to the promotion of worship, 
charity, and piety. To our faith in the perma- 
nence of the religious needs and aspirations let us 
then add the conviction that never in the history 



I40 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

of the world has it been so natural and easy as it 
is now to satisfy those cravings by the fruitful 
method of voluntary association. 

Thirdly, let us gain confidence in the future of 
the New England churches by contemplating the 
prodigious changes of legal condition and external 
circumstance through which they have already 
passed in safety. To appreciate the magnitude of 
these changes, we must recall the facts that suf- 
frage in Massachusetts was long conditioned upon 
church-membership, that towns could be fined for 
neglecting to support the gospel, that for two cen- 
turies attendance at meeting on the Sabbath could 
be enforced by fine, that all corporations holding 
lands within a parish were taxable down to 183 1 
for the support of public worship, and that down 
to 1835 the property of individual parishioners was 
held liable for the debts of the parish. Never was 
there a firmer or closer union of Church with State 
than that which existed in Massachusetts in 1630, 
and never has there been more complete separa- 
tion of Church from State than that which exists 
in Massachusetts to-day. Churches and ministers 
have gradually been stripped of every peculiar 
privilege and every adventitious support, until they 
now stand upon this firm ground, — that they partly 
satisfy an imperious need and an ineffable longing 
of the human soul. It would have been happier 
for the cause of religion if the disestablishment 
of churches had proceeded as rapidly in Europe 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 141 

as it has in Massachusetts. History then might 
not have had to record that millions of educated 
and liberal-minded men have been alienated from 
religion by the habitual political attitude of the 
established churches. Time to come can hardly 
have in store for the New England churches changes 
comparable in gravity with those which they have 
already experienced. Their present legal condi- 
tion is healthier, freer, more natural, and more 
likely to be stable than any previous condition. 
The minister is judged, like other men, by his 
gifts, attainments, and character; and the church 
is valued for the services which it renders to its 
members and the community. 

Two hundred and fifty years is a long life for 
anything of human creation. There is not a writ- 
ten political constitution in the world which has 
even half of that age. Empires and republics 
have come and gone, old dynasties have disap- 
peared and new ones risen to power, within that 
period. In our own little Commonwealth, not only 
the external form of government has changed, but 
the whole theory or essence of the political con- 
stitution as well. There is not a single industry, 
manufacture, or human occupation which has not 
undergone fundamental changes in its processes 
and its results within that time. But all these 
years this venerable church has maintained its 
original organization, and held stoutly on its way 
through gladness and gloom, through sunshine 



142 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

and storm. Solemnly, resolutely, and hopefully 
may it move on for centuries to come. 

Does any one ask why universities, which must 
inevitably be occupied chiefly with secular knowl- 
edge, should feel any great concern for the per- 
manence of religious institutions .f* I answer that 
universities exist to advance science, to keep alive 
philosophy and poetry, and to draw out and culti- 
vate the highest powers of the human mind. Now 
science is always face to face with God, philosophy 
brings all its issues into the one word " duty," 
poetry has its culmination in a hymn of praise, 
and a prayer is the transcendent effort of man's 
intelligence. 

The minister said : " Massachusetts once took it very 
hard that John Cotton, in some mood of discouragement, 
thought of departing to New Haven ; and New Haven took 
it very hard when the Rev. John Davenport was called to be 
minister of First Church. Let it be our assurance that we 
bear ho ill-will, but, on the contrary, cherish only honor and 
afifection for that confederated colony and its noble Uni- 
versity, that we earnestly desire to-day a word from Presi- 
dent Porter, who, I am happy to say, does not need to be 
introduced to our congregation." 

ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT NOAH PORTER. 

I have been speculating for some time as to what 
feat of ingenuity the pastor of this church would 
resort to in order to give any good reason for my 
being here. I am sure I feel very much out of 
place. The real reason, I am confident, was the 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 143 

last which he gave, that I am not totally a stranger 
to this congregation, nor to its pastor, in bonds of 
Christian or fraternal fellowship. Some ten years 
ago my reverend predecessor and myself, he then 
being in office, were somehow or other impelled to 
ask Dr. Ellis to come and preach for us. Some 
two or three years afterwards I preached for him, 
and no evil ever came of either, except that I am 
now called upon to make a speech. And now I am 
before you, what can I do with greater propriety 
than to recognize the obligation — which has not 
been adverted to — of the other New England 
colonies to this First Church of Boston ? The First 
Church of Boston was not, certainly, the first among 
the churches in New England in point of time, but 
it early held a prominence among them by reason 
of the quality of the men w^ho were in it, and by its 
position in this city, and its special relations to the 
other colonies and their churches, which gives it 
the highest place in the reverence and affection of 
all loyal New-Englanders. Here the Rev. Thomas 
Hooker and his company whiled away a year or two, 
taking counsel and advice of Governor Winthrop 
and the leading members of this church, before he 
ventured off on his long journey toward the Connec- 
ticut. That journey, which now takes us less than 
four hours to perform, was to them a weary walk of 
fourteen or sixteen days, as they proceeded toward 
the west over the wooded hills, through the rough 
wilderness, and along the swiftly descending valley 



144 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

of the Chicopee, till, finally, they were brought out 
in safety upon those fair meadows of the Connecticut 
valley, to which their hearts had been turning with 
a longing which could not be repressed. And here 
John Davenport, after in vain trying to convert the 
members of this godly Commonwealth to his pecu- 
liar notions of the relations of Church and State, 
gave up the attempt in despair, and with the New 
Haven Company took possession of the territory be- 
tween the Connecticut and the Hudson rivers, in 
which he sought to build a new Jerusalem, after his 
own fashion, that should be four-square according 
to the pattern in the Apocalypse, — moved perhaps 
by its contrast with the pattern of the original 
streets which he saw in Boston. The same John 
Davenport, moreover, after trying in vain to realize 
the New Jerusalem in New Haven, at the end of 
some thirty-five years of his vain endeavor, and par- 
ticularly after the Colony of Connecticut had ab- 
sorbed the Colony of New Haven, came back to 
Boston to renew again his first efforts as pastor of 
this church for the two or three years which preceded 
his death. Here also Roger Williams, after afflicting 
this church in many ways and being afflicted by it, 
after protesting and being protested against, gave up 
in despair and went to Rhode Island, under compul- 
sion and with a protest, seeking soul liberty for him- 
self and using it freely afterwards in being a thorn 
in the side of the greater colonies. In this way it 
was that this First Church of Boston became the 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 145 

mother, or the step-mother, of Connecticut, New 
Haven, and Rhode Island. 

These facts suggest the reflection that the pe- 
cuhar influence of the settlers of the Massachusetts 
Colony, represented so emphatically as they were 
in the First Church of Boston, to the New England 
life and the New England character, has not, in one 
point, been so distinctly referred to as might be 
desired. The early Bostonians and the Massachu- 
setts emigrants, headed by the First Church and 
represented in them, did not come here simply 
because they were driven from England. They did 
not resort to these shores solely to find a shelter in 
the wilderness. Stern necessity, it is true, gave the 
first impulse to their movement; but the movement 
was also animated by the hope that they might here 
establish the kingdom of God after a nobler pattern 
than had hitherto been known elsewhere in this 
wide world. They came, not simply to preach the 
gospel with boldness, not to pray as they might, but 
they also came to apply the principles of the gospel 
to every kind of human institution, — to the school, 
to the college, to the commonwealth, to all social 
relations. It is true that out of this fair ideal many 
of their errors and their failures proceeded, but it 
is also true that the ideal itself should confer on 
them immortal honor. The Puritans had this aim 
ever in their minds. It was ever high and lifted 
up before their eyes. Many of the methods which 
they adopted for its realization, and in which they 

10 



146 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

firmly believed, were mistaken, yet for all that the 
ideal itself was grand and noble. 

The covenant adopted by this church has been 
often alluded to, and it could not be too often ex- 
tolled, nor in terms of excessive praise. It seems 
almost to have been given by inspiration, — the 
language is so pure, the sentiments are so simple 
and yet so fervent, the acknowledgment of the 
great object of the Christian's trust is so incidental 
and yet so comprehensive, and the recognition of 
what might be called the whole catalogue of Chris- 
tian duties is so wide reaching. You have asked 
perhaps, some of you, why this covenant was accom- 
panied by no creed or confession of faith. The 
answer to that question is found in the more general 
explanation that this was not the way of the older 
Puritans. In the oldest time no church, with rare 
exceptions, was founded on a written or a spoken 
creed. Each pastor composed a catechism of doc- 
trine for his flock, because each pastor was supposed 
to teach his people with sufficient clearness and 
authority, as of necessity to make them acquainted 
with the orreat doctrines of the Christian faith. It 
is not known just how or when, but the fact is 
certain that after some three or four generations 
this practice was gradually changed. I am not cer- 
tain that the older practice was not the better, 
for the reason that creeds change, necessarily, with 
the philosophy of the times in which they are com- 
posed; and it is scarcely possible that any man, 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 147 

after a century had elapsed, should accept, in all its 
forms of statement, the philosophical definitions 
and the minutely specified relations between one 
truth and another, of any creed which was held a 
century before. I am not certain, even, but that if 
the old Puritan fashion had been upheld with fidelity 
and been applied as it might have been, the Congre- 
gational churches of New England might have been 
saved from that schism or division by which they were 
so unhappily separated. Of one thing, however, I 
am certain, — that when we read these early creeds, 
and find in them statements that we condemn or dis- 
approve or reject, or when we find in the early ser- 
mons passages which offend us so much and offend 
us rightly, we would do well to remember that in 
the times in which they were uttered, and in the 
thoughts of the men who uttered them, they did 
not have precisely the same significance or call for 
the same assent as they would require from us. In 
other words, we ought to look back upon the teach- 
ings of the past with something like a just and wisely 
ordered historic imagination and historic sense, if we 
would do justice to the good sense and sound judg- 
ment and Christian feeling of those teachers and di- 
vines who had a high place, at least, in the affection 
of our fathers. Why should men not be tolerant of 
the past as well as of the present 1 While we do not 
hesitate to criticise the theology or to call in ques- 
tion many of the explanations of Christian truth 
which were then given, it would be narrow in us not 



148 FIRST CHURCH IxN BOSTON. 

to expect that from one century to another the same 
truths would be defended by better arguments, and 
be presented in better definitions, and possibly en- 
shrined in formulae of prayer and consecration supe- 
rior to those of earlier times. No less than this, it 
seems to me, is required of us when on an occasion 
like this we desire with our inmost hearts to pay 
the highest and sincerest homage to men who, from 
one generation to another, have been loved and 
honored, and who will continue to receive the re- 
spect of all right-minded men. 

So much for the past with its admonitory lessons. 
What is before us in the future } Shall the Chris- 
tian Church remain in the face of the scientific and 
philosophic atheism that is now so boldly proclaimed 
and so plausibly argued ? Shall it stand before an 
historical criticism that would persuade us that the 
supernatural Christ is soon to vanish out of history, 
and ought therefore to be banished from the Chris- 
tian's creed } Shall it continue in the face of the 
insidious and the repeated proclamation, here and 
there, that those bonds of duty which hold society 
together are soon to be physiologically relaxed or 
psychologically demonstrated out of their authority, 
and thus be robbed of their sacredness and their 
binding force } Shall we renounce Christ and the 
living God, and resort to science and philosophy 
for the defence of our faith ? Shall we rely largely 
upon historical criticism, the study of which is con- 
fined to the few ? Not in the least. The strong- 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 149 

hold of the Christian faith is not necessarily in the 
schools either of philosophy or of history, important 
as these are ; it is in the heart of man, as it wakens 
there those convictions which the intellect assents to 
as spiritually necessary and true, and which, there- 
fore, we are certain must remain and prevail. If 
we in our Christian lives do but rise to a more con- 
stant and a more vivid apprehension of the presence 
of the living God ; if we shall emerge from each one 
of these controversies and discussions with a con- 
stantly increasing sense of his personality and his 
loving providence ; if we learn to read and accept 
the New Testament more and more for our per- 
sonal guidance and our personal consolation, — we 
cannot but attain a higher and a more assured faith 
in Christ as the ground of our hopes and the joy 
of our lives. The covenant of this church, which 
has often been referred to, is too familiar for me to 
recite ; let me repeat from modern literature another 
covenant or another prayer which seems to match 
it well, though it be phrased in a diction that 
might have seemed strange to our fathers : — 

" Strong Son of God, Immortal Love, 

Whom we that have not seen thy face 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
Believing when we cannot prove ! 

" Thou seemest human and divine, — 
The highest, holiest manhood, thou ; 
Our wills are ours, we know not how, 
Our wills are ours to make them thine. 



150 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

" Our little systems have their day, 

They have their day and cease to be ; 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 

" We have but faith ; we cannot know ; 
For knowledge is of things we see ; 
And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness ; — let it grow. 

" Let knowledge grow from more to more. 
But more of reverence in us dwell. 
That mind and soul, according well. 
May make our music, as before." 

May we not conclude that if our modern litera- 
ture, amid all the misgivings which it derives from 
philosophy and science, can express a faith like this, 
in forms that both kindle and elevate the imagina- 
tion, and if such worship can rise from the men of 
this generation, we need never despair of the life 
and growth of the Christian Church. Rather should 
I say, we need never despair, in the presence of the 
living Christ, that his Church will continue to shine 
as the light and hope of mankind. 

Then followed the singing of the 107th Psalm to the 
tune of " China." 

From Psalms, Hymns, & Spiritual Songs of the Old & New Testaments 
faithfully translated into English Metre for the use, edification, & Comfort of 
the saints in public & private, especially in New England. 

From the Sth Edition. Printed by John Allen & Vavasour Paris, at the 
Brick Shop near the Town House, Boston, 1695. 

With thanks unto the Lord confess 

because that good is he ; 
Because his loving kindnesses 

last to eternity. 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 151 

So say the Lord's redeemed, whom bought 

he hath from the enemies' hands, 
And from the east & west hath brought 

from south & northern lands. 

In desart stray'd, in desart way, 

no dwelling town they find. 
They hungry were & thirsty they 

their souls within them pin'd. 

Then did they to Jehovah cry 

when they were in distress ; 
Who did them set at liberty 

out of their anguishes. 

In such a way as was most right 

he led them forth alsoe. 
That to a city which they might 

inhabit, they might goe. 

Oh that men praise Jehovah would 

for his great goodness then. 
And for his marvellous lovingness 

unto the sons of men. 

The minister said : " There is nothing like an anniver- 
sary for bringing one's treasures into the light, and had 
it not been for this feast I should not have known that 
the minister of a famous Massachusetts church, the First 
Church in Concord, is a descendant of Rev. John Wilson ; 
I have found him out, however, and shall now ask a word 
from the Rev. Grindall REYNOLDS," 

ADDRESS OF REV. GRINDALL REYNOLDS. 

The strains of the old psahn which we have heard 
are very famiHar to me. Only a few days ago I was 
reading the account of the two hundredth anniver- 
sary of the settlement of the town in which I live. 



152 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

At that anniversary this very psalm was sung, line 
by line, just as the fathers sung it. I thought then, 
as I think now, that nothing so shows what a pro- 
digious change and growth have come in all the 
elements of prosperity and social life, as the fact 
that two hundred and fifty years ago people could 
sing the third verse of that psalm, " In desart stray 'd," 
etc., and feel that it expressed truly their own expe- 
rience. I suppose that I owe my connection with 
this interesting occasion to two facts : first, that I 
represent the oldest inland parish in Massachusetts, 
the descendants of that body of people who first left 
the tide-waters and pushed out into the true wilder- 
ness country ; and second, and especially, that a few 
drops of the blood of that plain, good, honored, and 
useful man, John Wilson, your first minister, flow 
in my veins. I count it a high privilege that some 
real ties of association connect me with this time 
and event. Before coming into this place I walked 
into your chapel to look at the portrait of your old 
minister. I saw the dark, thin face, touched with a 
little of that melancholy, so often found in the coun- 
tenances of the men of his generation, who suffered 
so much and sacrificed so much for their faith. That 
he was a stern Puritan, capable of putting down 
any man or any opinion which he thought threat- 
ened the kinQ:dom of God in this new world, is clear. 
That he shared the weakness and superstitions of 
the time, believing in dreams and omens and the 
private gift of prophecy, we must admit, if we accept 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 153 

the statement of Cotton Mather. That he was one 
who had a strong, clear conscience, who can deny, 
who remembers that he relinquished the pleasant 
quiet of college life and study, that he gave up the 
people whom he loved and who loved him, that he 
left behind father and mother, brother and sister, 
and wife too, and came to the wilderness rather than 
be false to his convictions ? All these qualities he 
shared with his brethren. They were part of the 
common stock of the Puritan character. But what 
was special to him, what made the core of his per- 
sonal character, was that, as the same Cotton Mather 
describes him, he was an apostle of zeal and love. 
He was a man with an affectionate temper and 
warm blood in him. It was no doubt this same 
warm blood which led him, as the tradition has it, 
to climb a tree and plead with the people for the 
re-election of Governor Winthrop. It was this 
which won Winthrop's warm, deep regard. It was 
this warm blood and kindly heart which made, what 
an elder of the church once said, true, that in the 
whole congregation there was scarcely one man who 
did not love and reverence John Wilson, and possible 
for him to reply, not one whom John Wilson does 
not love. There were, perhaps, greater men in the 
colony intellectually than he. Probably John Cot- 
ton had a more powerful mind, a deeper and finer 
scholarship, and so a greater place as a theologian. 
But John Wilson was a pastor, not simply in name 
and by election, but in fact and in all the tendencies 



154 



FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 



of his character. He was a man who took up into 
his heart and sympathies all the joys, griefs, errors, 
and needs of his people, — a man, as it was said, great 
in discipline, who could comfort, guide, and, if need 
be, admonish and exhort, — a man to build up and 
strengthen in all s^ood elements of Christian life a 
church, and to be justly remembered and honored 
for so doing. 

There is nothing more profitable, as I believe, than 
this recalling and cherishing of a good past ; not 
alone, as his Excellency the Governor had it, the 
idealized past, but the real, stern, hard, conscience- 
loving past, which has created good institutions and 
built up great and noble life. In some countries, 
no doubt, the past becomes almost an oppression. 
Its memories hallow sometimes not only the good 
but the bad equally, and so stand as a barrier in the 
way of true progress. There is no such danger in 
our State and country. Here the new triumphs. 
Every eye is open to clearer light ; every mind is 
expecting fresh progress in knowledge, in custom 
of life, in revelations of truth, in all things. No 
danger but we shall go forward ! No danger that 
anything shall hamper or repress life, energy, hope, 
liberty ! No danger at all ! Perhaps the rather 
danger that we shall seek change for the sake of it. 
The memory of the old steadies us. It gives us a 
sober sense of that from which all real advance 
comes ; that the good present and the hopeful future 
have their roots in the noble past. It is good that 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 1 55 

while the eyes are looking forward, and mind and 
heart are expecting more light and better, our feet 
should stand on the stable foundation of sound 
righteous history and life. 

But I must not linger. I offer you the greeting 
and congratulation of the oldest inland parish to 
that church which may be considered to be in some 
way the spiritual mother of all old Massachusetts 
parishes ; to that church which, seated by the rest- 
less waters of Massachusetts Bay, has seen the corn- 
fields and pastures of the little Trimountain peninsula 
become the centre of a great material prosperity, of 
a refined intellectual life, and, surely we must add, 
of a lofty religious faith and character ; to that 
church which, in all this wonderful advance, has 
contributed its full share of moral power and influ- 
ence ; to that church which to-day, in this beautiful 
temple which it has reared, is preparing to do its 
part to make the growth which the future has in 
store pure, solid, righteous, and so enduring. 

The minister said : " There is one of this company who 
left us in very early childhood, and without giving any rea- 
sons ; but we have always been ready to receive him back 
to our fold, and rejoice always in his word and work. Not 
only a baptized child of the church but a descendant from 
the Rev. John Cotton, one of its first ministers, he kindly 
recognizes our claim for a word, and I need not ask you to 
give your attention to the Rev. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D." 



156 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 



ADDRESS OF REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D. 

I thank you very much for allowing me to say a 
few words, and I will honestly try that they shall 
be very few. I should like to say something of 
the impression which this celebration of John Cot- 
ton makes upon one of his descendants. My con- 
nection with my very great grandfather is so remote 
that I may venture to speak of him without hesita- 
tion. I am so full of pleasure in life, and so full of 
the sense that that pleasure is very much increased 
by its being my happiness to live in Boston, that I 
cannot but be grateful to him who had a great deal 
to do with my living at all, and a great deal to do 
with making^ Boston what it is for a man to live in. 
I am not sure that he would accept of his repre- 
sentative. I am not sure that if he saw me standing 
here and speaking any words in his praise, and 
knew exactly where I was standing, there might not 
be some words rising to his lips that would show 
that neither I nor you were wholly what he could 
approve. He might say prelatist, he might say 
heretic. He might call me by the first name, call 
both of us by the second name ; and yet that criti- 
cism, as we stand in the presence of his memory on 
this commemoration day, would make absolutely no 
difference. John Cotton, in the life into which he 
has passed, now looks deeper and looks wider, and 
we have a right to enter into communion with the 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 157 

spirit of the man, and not simply with his specific 
opinions or the ways in which he worshipped ; we 
may claim him, at least, as one who would honor 
our recognition of him, as one whom we are at 
liberty to honor. It would be a terrible thing, it 
would narrow our life and make it very meagre, if 
we had no right to honor and to draw inspiration 
from any men except those we agree with and who 
would approve of us. As we look abroad through 
history and around through the world, I think some- 
times that our noblest inspirations and our best 
teachings have come from the men who, when we 
compare our views with theirs, are very far from us; 
of whom, when we ask for their approbation of us, 
we have to beg with very hesitating lips. And so 
we may at least claim the privilege of John Cotton, 
that he shall give us the inspiration of paying him 
our honor. 

And it seems to me that a man who stands, as 
this man stands, at the beginning of the history of 
a nation or a town, is an everlasting benefaction to 
•the town or nation. It is an example that never 
can be exhausted. The way in which Washington 
stands at the beginning of the national history and 
sends down a perpetual power, full of strength and 
beauty, is the great typical American instance of 
the way in which, at the beginning of the history of 
every town, of every city, of every State, of every 
institution, there will be these typical men. Our 
Western States are gathering them now, just as our 



158 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Eastern States gathered them two hundred years 
aso ; and the earnest, faithful ministers, and the 
consecrated men who are dedicating themselves to 
the building up of institutions in our Western land, 
are going to pass into that perhaps mythical, but 
perhaps for that reason all the truer and more 
genuine admiration, into which they who founded 
our institutions two hundred and fifty years ago 
have passed now. For his standing at the begin- 
ning of our history and sending us his inspiration 
perpetually, we thank John Cotton. 

And I thank him, as a Church of England man, 
as a man loving the Episcopal Church with all niy 
heart, I thank him for being a Puritan. I thank 
him for giving me a renewed assurance of that 
which all history teaches me to believe, and that 
which my knowledge of God would make me believe 
if no illustration of it were written in history, that 
God will not permit a church to become corrupt 
and degenerate and unfaithful to its duties without 
sending a man who shall bear testimony against 
it and stir it to the regeneration of its life. The 
Church of England has no men to thank to-day 
more devoutly. Not her great scholars, her great 
orators, her noble teachers, her splendid mission- 
aries ! She has no men to whom she ought to be 
more grateful to-day than to the Puritans who told 
her in the seventeenth century how degraded her 
life was becoming. 

But when I recall the name of this church, it fills 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 



159 



me with still other feelings of gratitude. " The 
First Church of Christ ! " I think there is infinite 
suggestion, infinite poetry, in the thought of the 
first church of Christ in any land. If a man feels, 
as the disciples of Christ do feel, that all the earth 
is his; if we believe that whatever elements of eood 
the savage lands have brought forth they have 
brought forth by the inspiration of his Spirit work- 
ing even where his name has been unknown, and 
that all these lands are waiting for the touch of the 
Christ they cannot recognize to be quickened into a 
life they have not guessed of yet, — then what shall 
we think of that church which stands perpetually 
bearing the proud record in its name, that it was 
the first to bring the everlasting and universal 
Christ into a new section, a new district of the 
world.'' Here for the first time, when the First 
Church of Christ was started, that became possible 
which had been impossible before. No church can 
stand here in Boston to the very end of time that 
must not humbly owe and pay its debt of gratitude 
to the First Church of Christ, that set his name 
upon these hills and made the winds vocal with the 
new ideas of his gospel. 

The seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries 
belong wonderfully together. The seventeenth 
century was a time of deep religious conviction ; 
the nineteenth century boasts itself of large toler- 
ation. It is perfectly natural to find, as we look 
into the history of the seventeenth century, that 



l6o FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

to deep conviction toleration was again and again 
sacrificed ; and as we look into the history of the 
nineteenth century, we can see we have not yet 
obtained such a large and symmetrical manhood 
that, one is not still sacrificed to the other, and find 
aijain and asjain conviction sacrificed to toleration. 
It would be a poor world to live in if it could get 
to the end of itself in nineteen centuries, and there 
were not others before us greater and better. That 
is one of the elements by which the future centuries 
will be made better; we must look to the combining 
together in the same character of those elements 
which have existed in different centuries thus far. 
When absolute relio;ious conviction shall abide side 
by side with earnest toleration ; when men shall be- 
lieve with all their hearts, as they believed in tlie 
seventeenth century, and at the same time be willing 
that other men shall believe differently, as they are 
now in the nineteenth century; when toleration 
shall not be oppressed by conviction of religious 
truth, and when private thought and belief with 
regard to religious truth shall make men all the 
more tender and jealous of the rights of other men's 
consciences, — then there will come a century which, 
combining the blessings of the seventeenth and the 
nineteenth, shall make a nobler world to live in 
than we have seen yet, — the time that has been 
prophesied, but has not yet come, when mercy and 
truth shall dwell together, when righteousness and 
peace shall kiss each other. That our celebration 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. i6l 

may help the coming of that day, I am sure is the 
prayer of every one who joins in any of these com- 
memoration services. 

The minister said: "Harvard College was established 
primarily that the churches of the Commonwealth might 
not lack competent ministers, men in whose training for 
their high service manhood and knowledge had been added 
to faith ; and the bond between the College and the churches 
was very strong. However it may be with the forms of 
truth, we believe that in the spirit of truth College and 
Church are still at one, and, feeling sure that our day would 
be not without interest to the Theological Faculty of the 
University, we have asked the Dean of that Faculty to favor 
us with a word." 



ADDRESS OF REV. PROF. C. C. EVERETT, D.D. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — An attempt has been 
made by one of the speakers this afternoon, a very 
impressive attempt, to make us feel how lono- two 
hundred and fifty years have been. I think it would 
be even more difficult to make us realize what two 
hundred and fifty years of the life of a church mean. 
Especially is this so in regard to a church which 
has never been the instrument of any civil or eccle- 
siastical power, but has always been a church of the 
people and for the people. Think how many happy 
homes its beneficence has made ; think how many 
wandering souls it has rescued during these long 
years ; think how many spirits have been uplifted 
to calmer heights by its solemn worship ; and now 
it stands to-day as fresh, as young, as ever, doing its 

II 



l62 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

work as well as ever, giving us the promise of suc- 
cessful labors in the years to come. But I think we 
must fully realize, when we speak of the Church, that 
in founding the Church, our fathers were also plant- 
ing the State. They founded the churches which 
were to spring into States ; and when we think of 
this, we realize, as we do not always, the fact that 
we have no mythical period to our history, — the 
fact that all our history is so transparent and open 
to us. We have no heroic age, veiled from us by 
the shadows of awe, myth, and tradition. At the 
same time, I wonder, when I think of it, how little 
we miss this mythical heroic age. We have an 
heroic age as noble as that of any other people, and 
it needs no shadowy abode of myth, no veil of mys- 
tery. Our fathers were heroic as those stern heroes 
of olden story. They were wise as Arthur and pure 
as Galahad. We find, also, that supernatural ele- 
ment which gives so much of the charm to those old 
heroic stories, for our fathers felt the very presence 
of God with them, and every word and every act 
sprang from this consciousness. They were but as 
instruments in his hands. 

Now, in an anniversary like this, when we celebrate 
the great beginning which occupies our thoughts 
to-day, we find ourselves face to face with these 
heroes of the past, — our fathers. We find ourselves 
face to face, also, with that great idea which was 
their inspiration and which has been the life of our 
nation ever since. For this transparency of our 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 163 

history, that I spoke of, is marked in nothing more 
than in this, — that the ideal element, which is so 
often hidden in the lives of other peoples, which they, 
perhaps, slowly come to realize themselves, — which, 
perhaps, they never come to realize, — is ever present 
in our history. Just as the history of the Hebrew 
people is marked in this, that providential guidance 
stands forth as in no other, and we read that " God 
did " and " God said," so in our history this inner 
providence, which is present in the history of all 
peoples, makes itself manifest in every step. As we 
look back, we find ourselves face to face with this 
grand ideal, face to face with these heroic souls ; 
and we cannot help reading the question in their 
deep, earnest eyes, whether we have been true to 
it and to them. If we have not, in vain is it that 
we come to do them reverence. This ideal element, 
as we have been told this afternoon, consists of two 
parts, namely, of liberty and of religion. These 
were not held by our fathers as I have named them 
simply side by side. The ideal of religion was the 
fundamental ideal. Liberty was for the sake of 
that. It was not merely religious liberty they sought, 
it was not merely liberty for religion, it was liberty 
for the sake of religion. 

Now, to this ideal of liberty I think w^e may fairly 
say that we have been true. Our generation also 
has shown itself heroic. When this ideal of free- 
dom moved like a pillar of fire through the dark 
night of war, the nation followed it with bleeding 



164 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

heart. But how is it in regard to religion ? I think 
if we should lay before our fathers all our triumphs 
of art, all our triumphs of civilization, all our dis- 
coveries in science, they would still look from them 
all and ask for that one thing needful. They left a 
civilization dear to them as ours is to us, they left 
it for this ideal of which I speak, and they would 
still ask, " How is it with religion } Are you true, 
also, to that.f*" And would they not miss in our 
busy streets what they need most, in our training 
schools what they need most, in our varied associ- 
ations for varied business what they need most, — 
something of this presence ? Certainly the religious 
element does not fill the place in our common con- 
sciousness that it did in theirs. And here one or two 
considerations may be named : one is, that our fathers 
were picked men. They were drawn, as by a sort 
of magnet, from their contemporaries ; they came 
here as leaven to introduce a new power or life. 
No sooner were they here than the leaven was cov- 
ered by the meal, poured in without measure as it 
is being poured in now, and we need not ask our- 
selves whether the whole mass be like that original 
type, but simply whether the leaven be still working 
at its heart. And then, again, you must allow me 
to make a distinction in regard to religion. There 
are two forms of religion, and though I shall place 
one vastly higher than the other, I would have you 
understand that both, in their measure, may enter 
into the true and complete religion. In the one, 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 165 

men seek God for what he may do for them. They 
seek to make him, if I may so speak, their instru- 
ment; at least, they seek from him temporal and 
eternal prosperity and happiness. In the other, 
men ask what they shall do for God. They seek 
to make themselves his instruments and to do his 
will. Now, of the two that I have named, it is the 
first that makes the most parade. It is this that 
builds most temples, it is this that lights most altar 
fires, it is this that makes the idea of religion con- 
standy prominent. The other is more quiet, it 
makes less parade, yet it is the higher of the two. 
One we may compare to the starlight : we go out 
and we see only the stars, and we say, " How beau- 
tiful they are ! " The other may be compared to 
the sunlight : we go out into the world, not to say, 
" How beautiful is the sun!" but " How beautiful is 
the world ! " So the divinity of the one form of 
religion says, " Come and do reverence to me ; " the 
other says, " Go, do my will." Now, as I have said, 
these two elements may together, each in its meas- 
ure, be united in one perfect religion. Of the two, 
it must be admitted that the first or lower form is 
certainly much less prominent than it was in almost 
any other period of the history of the world. It is 
this that has been torn by criticism, that has been 
attacked by so-called science ; it is this that has had 
to bear the great brunt of the onslaught against the 
religious experiences. But the great question for 
us is whether there still remains, in its due propor- 



l66 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

tion, that higher element of religion, that element 
of obedience, that element that seeks the will of 
God. This our fathers had. It was this that drove 
them to this wilderness : they came to do God's w'ill. 
And the question for us to ask ourselves is w'hether 
that spirit animates their children. Who shall an- 
swer? Who, at least, shall dare say in the face of all 
the triumphs of philanthropy, in the face of all the 
triumphs of Christian charity, — who shall dare to 
say that it does not ? And I would add, simply, 
that the work that this religious faith has to do 
to-day is very like that which it had to do in the 
day of our fathers. We speak often of this First 
Church as " the church of the wilderness." It was 
pushed far in advance of the reach of the civiliza- 
tion of the time into a new world ; and are not 
new realms constantly opening before us now.'' Not 
realms of the physical world, but realms of the in- 
tellectual world ? Are not these great reaches of 
science and civilization opening before us, and is not 
the work of the Church now, what it was then, to 
press on to occupy these new lands, and plant itself 
in advance even, in this intellectual region, w'hich 
is, so far as religion may be concerned, a wilderness, 
— to plant itself there that the wilderness may blos- 
som like the rose ? Long may this First Church of 
Boston continue to do, as it is doing now, its blessed 
work ! 

The anthem, " Send out thy light" (Gounod), was then 
sung by the choir. And the minister said : " Salem was 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 167 

John Winthrop's landing-place, and though, as it is re- 
corded, ' he liked it not,' he still landed there, and we 
have had reason to be grateful that it has been the home 
of so many noble men and women. Our own church has 
been called Salem Chapel for the number of those whom 
we have been glad to welcome from that City of Peace, 
I am sure that you will be glad to hear one who will speak 
for Winthrop's landing-place." 



ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT S. RANTOUL. 

The lateness of the hour admonishes me to ad- 
dress myself at once and without verbiage to the 
purpose I had in view in accepting your kind in- 
vitation to take part in this memorial. My object 
was to ask a moment's attention to a few sentences 
from a very remarkable letter of the period, — a 
letter remarkable for its authorship, remarkable for 
the times and circumstances which produced it, 
and equally remarkable for the rare and admirable 
spirit of tolerance which prompted it and breathes 
through it. 

No member of the Winthrop company — the 
great Suffolk emigration of 1630 — was more justly 
conspicuous than Sir Richard Saltonstall. He was 
the first named of six original patentees of Massa- 
chusetts Bay. He was a man of learning, of influ- 
ence, of rank and parts. His name was often at or 
near the head of lists of subscription for stock and 
funds. Mather called him " that excellent knight." 
Nobody of that whole company was more esteemed 



1 68 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

at home or on this side the water, and although he 
remained in New England but a few years, he hap- 
pens to have identified himself more thoroughly than 
any other of the Winthrop company, through an 
honorable progeny, with my own county of Essex. 
I state these facts simply to show that Sir Richard 
Saltonstall is as well entitled as any man of the 
number to be ranked as the exponent, the spokes- 
man, of the best thought and sentiment of the Puri- 
tanism of Old and New England, and I read this 
letter simply to show how far his own generous 
mind, and how far the better minds of the times 
on both sides of the water were impressed with a 
healthy abhorrence of the extremes to which some 
of our ancestors were inclined to carry their narrow- 
ness and intolerance. He wrote from England soon 
after his return there the following letter: — 

"It doth not a little grieve my spirit to hear what 
sad things are reported daily of your tyranny and 
persecutions in New England, as that you fine, whip, 
and imprison men for their consciences. Truly, 
friends, this your practice of compelling any in mat- 
ters of worship to do that whereof they are not fully 
persuaded, is to make them sin, for so the apostle 
tells us, and many are made hypocrites thereby, con- 
forming in their outward man, for fear of punish- 
ment. We pray for you and wish you prosperity 
every way, and hoped the Lord would have given 
you so much light and love there as not to practise 
those courses in a wilderness which you went so far 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 169 

to prevent. These rigid ways have laid you very 
low in the hearts of the saints. I do assure you 
that I have heard them pray in the public assemblies 
that the Lord would give you meek and humble 
spirits, not to strive so much for uniformity as to 
keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. 
I hope you do not assume to yourselves infallibility 
of judgment, when the most learned of the apos- 
tles confesseth he knew but in part and saw but 
darkly." 

The minister said : " When they speak of New England 
and the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans across the ocean, 
it is Plymouth, not Boston, that comes first from the lips. 
And so we of Boston must still look as the younger to the 
older, and ask a word of encouragement from a Plymouth 
minister and man." 

ADDRESS OF REV. G. W. BRIGGS, D.D. 

Have compassion upon me at this late hour, and 
I will have compassion upon you. In his desire to 
get as near to the Pilgrims as possible in point of 
time, my friend has asked me, as the oldest living 
minister that has been connected with the church 
which they formed, to respond for it to-day. Let 
me make my few words a right hand of fellowship 
from that older organization. Twenty-eight years 
earlier than the First Church in Boston, the Plym- 
outh Church was formed in the same simple way, 
by the covenanting together of godly, truth-loving 
men, probably in Elder Brewster's house, in Scrooby, 



170 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

in England. They were mainly gathered from the 
common people ; like those who heard Jesus gladly, 
those from whom apostles were made. Finding in a 
little while that they would "be harried out of the 
kingdom," or meet heavier punishment, they went 
first to Leyden, and a few years later, in 1620, came 
to Plymouth. After their first severe experiences 
here, I can imagine with what intense gratitude and 
joy they welcomed the earlier churches organized 
upon these shores. They had suffered from wasting 
sickness, nearly half of the first company going to 
their graves in the first four months. They had an 
experience of famine, so that men were sometimes 
faint from the want of proper food ; and they could 
offer only a bit of fish and a draught of cold water 
to those who came to visit them. They were in per- 
petual peril of attack from the native tribes. They 
were disturbed by internal dissensions also. For 
when these sons of God were gathered together, 
Satan came also among them in the person of a 
wily and false minister who purposed mischief. But 
those true-hearted men unmasked him, and indig- 
nantly drove him away to his own place. After 
nine years of such perils, when the Salem Church 
was formed, in 1629, how earnestly Governor Brad- 
ford, with others not named, must have hastened to 
greet it; and, though hindered by "cross winds" 
as they went over the Bay, only reaching Salem late 
in the day, they were in season to give their right 
hand of fellowship with deep religious joy. And 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 171 

when in the next year the churches in Boston, Dor- 
chester, Watertown, were organized, each must have 
seemed to them as a new star shining out upon the 
night round about them, whose rising they hailed 
with exceeding gladness as full of promise and 
hope. 

These stars differed from one another in various 
respects, but they all had one common glory. All 
of these organizations were created by a religious 
inspiration, and devoted to the highest ends ; and 
therefore they have survived. Other settlements 
were attempted with lower aims. One was made in 
Weymouth, in which men tried to live "by bread 
alone," and it quickly died. Basing themselves 
upon the eternal things, working for them, the Pil- 
grim and Puritan settlements have lasted through 
the succeeding centuries. What great things they 
have wrought! A twofold glory belongs to Plym- 
outh. In the cabin of the Mayflower the Pilgrims 
created a government founded upon the eternal truth 
of the divine rights of humanity, and not upon the 
baseless assumption of the divine right of kings. It 
has been eloquently said to-day that we need a re- 
ligion that shall unite the faith of the seventeenth 
century with the liberality of the nineteenth. The 
prophecy, we may almost say the glory, of that union 
belongs to the Plymouth Fathers. The liberality of 
the nineteenth century spoke in the farewell charge 
of Robinson, their minister, when the Pilgrims 
started from Leyden. And the faith of the seven- 



172 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

teenth centur}' inspired those who so bravely crossed 
the sea, and stayed through perils to build up here 
the kingdom of God. 

I leave the tempting theme. In 1630 the Pilgrim 
Church must have given its right hand to this in all 
the joy of hope. In thankfulness for what you have 
done in these two hundred and fifty years, as well 
as in the glad hope for coming centuries, as the rep- 
resentative of that Pilgrim Church I give you its 
right hand of fellowship again to-day. 

The minister then said that a telegram had been re- 
ceived from the President of the United States, and letters 
from the Secretary of State, Hon. William M. Evarts, and 
the Attorney-General, Hon. Charles Devens, acknowledg- 
ing, but declining invitations to be present with us. Many 
letters, some from Old Boston and others from friends in 
our land, would have been read to the congregation had 
time permitted. They will be found in the chapter of 
correspondence. The services continued with the singing 
of the following Hymn by Rev. CHARLES T. BROOKS : — 

O God ! while generations flee 

Like leaves before Thy face, 
Through endless ages Thou wilt be 

Thy children's dwelling-place. 

Great Shepherd of the countless flock, 

Where'er they rest or roam ; 
Their cheering sun, their sheltering rock, 

Their everlasting home ! 

Our sainted fathers, where are they ? 

They slept, they woke in Thee, 
And here in memory's light, to-day, 

They walk serene and free. 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 173 

Roll back, O Time, thy ceaseless wave, 

Bring round the day once more, 
When first they trod, the fi:ee and brave, 

This wild and wood-crowned shore. 

In God's first temple here they stood, 

His breath inspired the air ; 
And through the green, o'erarching wood 

Uprose their song and prayer. 

\Mien days grew dark, they sowed in trust, 

In patience, and in peace. 
Assured that God, the wise and just, 

Would give the' seed increase. 

A large-armed tree, behold it now ! 

God's word its living root ; 
To children's children each broad bough 

Brings healing, shade, and fi-uit. 

O Thou who led'st our sires of old, 

Their grateful children lead ; 
Thy flock in shelter safe enfold, 

In sunny pastures feed ! 

Still guide our footsteps in the way 

That climbs the morning height. 
Thy law, O God ! our cloud by day, 

Thy love our fire by night ! 

The afternoon exercises closed with a most fitting bene- 
diction by the Rev. JOHN H. MORISON, D.D. 

After an interval of two hours, a large company gath- 
ered in the church, to listen to a concert from the choir; 
and then passed, by invitation, into the chapel for a social 
gathering and collation. 

The choir, whose services added so much during the 
afternoon and the evening to the interest of the occasion, 
was composed as follows: Miss Annie Louise Gage, 
soprano; Mrs. Jennie M. Noyes, contralto; Mr. VV. H. 



174 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Fessenden, tenor; Mr. Clarence E. Hay, bass; and 
Mr. Arthur Foote, piano. The rendering of the fol- 
lowing ancient New England Psalm was much enjoyed by 
the company : — 

PSALM LXXVIII. Maschil of Asaph, 

Old Tune, — " Rainbow." 

Give list'ning ear unto my law, 

Ye people that are mine ; 
Unto the sayings of my mouth 

Do you your ear encline. 

My mouth I 'II ope in parables, 

I '11 speak things hid of old, 
Which we have heard and known, and which 

Our fathers have us told. 

Them from their children we '11 not hide. 

But shew the age to come 
The Lord, his praise, his strength and works 

Of wonder he hath done. 

That th' age to come and children which 

Are to be born might know 
That they who should arise, the same 

Might to their children shew. 

That they upon the mighty God 

Their confidence might set ; 
God's works and his commandements 

Might keep and not forget. 

And might not like their fathers be 

A cross, stiff race, a race 
That set not right their hearts, not 

Firm with God their spirit was. 

The music, the gathering, and the banquet were all that 
could be desired, and the guests of the church were many. 





■^ 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND 
MEMBERS OF HIS CABINET. 

Executive Mansion, Washington, Nov. i8, iS8o. 
I regret that I cannot attend the very interesting commemo- 
ration services to be held to-day in honor of the two hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary of the completion of the First Church 
i^ Boston. j^_ g_ j^^ygg_ 



Department of State, Washington, Nov. i6, 1880. 
My dear Sir, — I regret extremely that it proves to be not 
in my power to attend the commemorative services on the ap- 
proaching anniversary of the First Church in Boston. 

Please convey to the committee my regrets, and, with my 
thanks for the courteous attention of their invitation, 
I am, with great respect, 

Your obedient servant, 

Wm. M. Evarts. 



Department of Justice, Washington, Nov. ii, 1S80. 
Dear Str, — I am exceedingly obliged for the invitation to 
attend the commemorative services in honor of the completion 
by the First Church in Boston of two hundred and fifty years, 
and regret extremely that my engagements will necessarily com- 
pel me to decline to be present upon so interesting an occasion. 

Your obedient servant, 

Chas. Devens. 
12 



178 FIRST CHURCH IX BOSTON. 

ENGLISH LETTERS. 
Frotn the Mitiister of ihe Unitarian Chapel in Old Boston. 

2 Winter's Terrace, Boston, England, Oct. 20, 1S80. 

Dear Dr. Ellis, — Permit me, on behalf of my congregation, 
to present to you a small engraving of Boston, photographs of 
our own chapel and school, Boston Church, and Dr. Cotton's 
pulpit, — the latter being the best I could get, it being a very 
difficult object to photograph, — and a small volume of tales. 

" A Legend of Boston, by Anthony Oldbuck," was written by 
the late Henry Harwood, Esq., Solicitor, and a member of my 
congregation. It has been a sort of scramble to get them so far 
ready for despatch. They required packing at ten minutes to 
time of departure of train from Boston, so kindly excuse all de- 
fects and untidiness. I trust they will reach you ere you leave 
the Mersey, for they ought to arrive in Liverpool to-night at seven 
o'clock. 

It was my intention to write you at greater length, but I must 
defer my epistle a few days. 

All our friends here wish you and yours a very safe and pleas- 
ant voyage to the New World. 

Your letter is being read with deep interest. 
Yours in haste, 

W. S. Key. 



From a Parishioner of St. Botolph^s. 

Spilsby Road, Boston, Lincolnshire, Sept. 25, 1S80. 
My dear Sir, — I am unexpectedly given, through a mutual 
friend, the privilege of congratulating yourself and your church 
on the completion of its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. I 
have the greatest possible pleasure in doing this, because I am 
a genuine native of the old tow-n, and because it is only by the 
merest accident that I am not an American, as my father and a 
lot of Unitarian friends had once determined to go to Washing- 
ton with my uncle, Pichey Thompson, author of the " History of 
Boston ; " and I know very well that if I had been born in your 



CORRESPONDENCE. 1 79 

great country I should have been attracted towards Boston, Mas- 
sachusetts, for my impression is, that in all which concerns the 
higher civilization of mankind your city is the foremost city in the 
world. Liberty without license, freedom of thought without vul- 
garity, and a sort of quiet " sticking to your guns " in matters of 
opinion, combined with great refinement of expression (of course, 
my experience of your Boston is only literary), seem to me to be 
your characteristics, and I have, moreover, the vanity to believe 
that some of these you derive from the old source. That the old 
source has seen better days is a melancholy fact ; but that your 
John Cotton should have partly sprung from it, and should have 
inherited certain qualities from it, is a fact also which is the re- 
verse of melancholy. I will not trouble you with any reference 
to the Rev. John Cotton, or the Pilgrim Fathers, or the May- 
flower, for I dare say you know more about them than I do ; but 
I will say this, that whenever any of your citizens should wish to 
pay a visit to the old town, I'hope there will always be one of my 
name (and we are many) to welcome him. If yourself, for in- 
stance, would like at all to preach in the Unitarian Chapel here, 
the pulpit would be very much at your service, and the congre- 
gation, which is small, might be enlarged for the occasion ; and 
myself or my elder brother Charles would be most glad to see 
and entertain you. 

Yours very truly, 

Thomas Wright. 
To Mr. Rufus Ellis. 



REPLIES TO TELEGRAM INVITING CLERGYMEN AND LAY- 
MEN OF BOSTON, ENGLAND, TO THE CELEBRATION. 

Boston Vicarage, Lincolnshire, England, Nov. 9, iSSo. 
My dear Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your 
telegram of the 6th instant, inviting me, in the name of your 
committee, to be present at the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary of the First Church in your city, and I have to thank 
yourself and them for their courtesy to myself individually and 
to the office which I have the honor to hold. 



l8o FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

By a singular coincidence, yours is the second invitation in 
connection with New Boston which I have been obliged this year 
to decline, — on the former occasion, through absence from home 
at the arrival of the telegram ; and on this occasion, by pressure 
of work at home and other reasons with which I need not trouble 
you- 7'he clergyman of your church, however, whom I had so 
lately the honor of seeing at my vicarage, will tell you how much 
I desire (if the providence of God shall clear the way) to visit a 
city so closely connected with this town where I have lived so 
long, and a slight recollection of which long life I venture to send 
with this letter ; and I remain, with much esteem, 
Your faithful servant, 

G. B. Blenkin, 

Vicar of Boston, Canon of Lincoln. 



Boston, Lincolnshire, Nov. 8, iSSo. 
Dear Sir, — I feel extremely obliged and flattered by your 
invitation to attend the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
your church, but I am unable to accept it. 
I am, dear sir, 

Yours respectfully, 

T. Wright. 

Boston, Lincolnshire, Nov. 8, iSSo. 
My dear Sir, — Permit me to thank you for the kind invita- 
tion you have sent me through our worthy vicar to be present at 
the jubilee to be held in commemoration of the two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of your church and the 
renaming of 3'our town. 

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be with you 
on that occasion, but my business engagements forbid it. 

I fully participate with you in the feelings of cordiality and 
esteem that connect the old Boston with the new as members of 
one family, and express a hope that these will long continue. 
Believe me, my dear sir. 

Yours very truly, 

Charles Wright. 



CORRESPONDENCE. l8l 

2 Winter's Terrace, Homcastle Road, 
Boston, Lincolnshire, Nov. 7, 1880. 

Dear Dr. Ellis, — Although compelled by pressure of busi- 
ness to delay the writing of this letter until now, I must avail 
myself of the present opportunity for discharging what I feel 
is a duty, and trust my communication may reach you before 
your celebration on the i8th instant. In the first place, I ought 
to express the great pleasure my congregation and myself experi- 
enced in being honored with a visit from yourself, Mrs. and Miss 
Ellis. Our pleasure would have been increased tenfold had only 
the time at your disposal allowed of our giving you a much more 
fitting reception than we were really able to. Most assuredly, if 
you could have remained amongst us over the Monday, we would 
have given you a public welcome, — though in Old Boston we 
don't move very quickly, or do very great things, such as "our 
kin across the sea " do in New Boston, if I except the great 
amount of bribery and corruption of which we are guilty at our 
elections, and for which we are at this moment being most right- 
eously castigated. 

I would also have guaranteed you the largest congregation 
my chapel is capable of holding, had you been able to preach in 
my pulpit ; for, in spite of our natural sluggishness, we can, on 
occasion, get up a little enthusiasm, and should have done so on 
such an auspicious occasion as the visit of one who occupies the 
exalted position of successor to the great and good Dr. Cotton of 
historic fame on both sides of the Atlantic, and the bishop (par- 
don the title) of a diocese very largely composed of churches and 
professors of a liberal faith. However, in lieu of that reception, 
I hope the small gift from my congregation may be accepted by 
your own people as an earnest of the fraternal feeling we enter- 
tain for our American cousins, or, as I ought to say in this case, 
our sons and daughters. 

Having learnt that you desired to take something from St. 
Botolph's town for your people to look at, to read, or to listen to, 
we thought a sketch of our town as it used to be would be ap- 
preciated by those whose very existence as citizens of one of the 
first cities in the United States is a fitting denouement of a drama 
the first scene of which was acted here nearly three centuries ago. 



l82 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

A view of the old bridge, as it is possible it looked in those early 
days of the seventeenth century, and a glimpse of the river, on 
the bosom of which first floated that ship's freight of determined 
Englishmen, together with the precious souls of their wives and 
children, all alike sustained with one desire to be free, and des- 
tined by an all-wise Providence to become the founders of the 
greatest republic the world has ever known, we felt must be wel- 
come to those who, in their veneration for all that was noble in 
the past, we regard as the most conservative of men. 

As from one congregation of free Christians to another, we 
deemed a photograph of our own chapel and school would not 
be inappropriate. The little volume of "Tales of Boston," writ- 
ten by a former member of my congregation, and presented by a 
present and the oldest member, Mr. Thomas Smalley Cooke, 
aged eighty-six, it was thought would amuse, while the photo- 
graphs of our church and Dr. Cotton's pulpit, as they were seen 
but a few days ago by yourself and Mrs. and Miss Ellis, would 
be a small memento of your visit you would be pleased to pos- 
sess. Not for any intrinsic value the gift possesses do we ask 
the citizens of New Boston, or those of them belonging to First 
Church, to accept these things, but as a small token of the high 
regard we have for them, and as an unworthy substitute for the 
more substantial and unanimous mark of recognition which my 
congregation think ought certainly to have been presented by 
our town on the auspicious celebration of the two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of your city. Some of us 
regret exceedingly that the lack of enterprise, good feeling, and a 
broad sympathy here should have rendered it impossible to per- 
form a great duty, but so it is. It is a pleasure to know that New 
Boston possesses more of these virtues, and that its citizens will 
make a practical display of their generous sympathy, one towards 
another, at the approaching celebration. We one and all send 
you and your fellow-citizens our warmest congratulations on the 
attainment of your two hundred and fiftieth year of age. "We are 
proud to know that the spirit of enterprise and manly endeavor 
that inspired the founders of your great nation and beautiful city 
was the spirit of true-born Englishmen ; and while the parent 
stock here and there shows signs of decay, we are conscious she 



CORRESPONDENCE. 183 

has given — unwittingly, we admit — some of her best life for the 
foundation of other nations, the peopling of other continents, and 
the advancement of civilization. Most sincerely do we pray and 
hope that the next two and a half centuries of time may be as 
prodigal of good results for your city and country as the last have 
been ; and especially do we trust the great American people will 
long continue to hold by those great principles of civil and relig- 
ious freedom which have been instrumental in advancing the 
United States of America to the very forefront amongst the na- 
tions of the earth. With our united very best wishes for the suc- 
cess of your gathering on the i8th instant, and for the continued 
welfare of your great republic, believe me to remain, 
Very cordially yours, 

W. S. Key, Minister. 

On behalf of the Unitarian congregation, Boston, Lincohishire. 

P. S. Your excellent letter to me, written at Lincoln City, af- 
ter being read with interest by my congregation, I handed to the 
Congregational Body for perusal, with the expressed hope that 
they would send you a fraternal greeting. I have not heard if 
they intend doing so. 

Many thanks to friends for cablegram just to hand by Vicar of 
St. Botolph's. 

I am requested to reply on behalf of Messrs. Wright and my- 
self. We should have been delighted to accept your hospitality 
on the i8th instant, but are detained here by Royal Commission 
and other matters. 

Canon Blenkin, I guess, will reply direct. 

W. S. Key. 



LETTERS FROM MINISTERS OF FIRST CHURCHES. 

Plymouth, Mass., Nov. 8, iSSo. 
Dear Sir, — Your invitation for me to attend the exercises 
on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding 
of the First Church in Boston has been duly received, and it 



184 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

will afford me great pleasure to be present at the time and place 
indicated. 

Very sincerely yours, 

E. Q. S. Osgood. 



Salem, Mass., Nov. 9, 1880. 

Gentlemen, — It will give me much pleasure to attend the 
commemorative services in honor of the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the First Church in Boston, Thursday, Nov. 18, 
1880. 

With many thanks for your cordial invitation, I am 

Very respectfully yours, 

F. Israel. 



Lynn, Mass., Nov. 9, 18S0. 

Dear Sir, — Your very kind invitation to attend the two hun- 
dred and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church in Boston is 
received, and in reply I would say that it will give me great pleas- 
ure to be present at the commemorative services to be held in 
honor of the occasion, unless some special duty should arise to 
detain me at home. 

I believe in such occasions. It seems eminently befitting, es- 
pecially in this busy and fast age, to improve such an anniversary 
by reviewing the lives and labors of the brave and good who have 
gone before us. We have so much to do, to care for, to think, 
read, and talk about in regard to what is going on in the wide and 
wide-awake world around us, that there is great danger of our 
forgetting the past and what is due to it from the present. ]\Iay 
your review of these two centuries and a half furnish to you who 
are most interested, and to all who shall read the reports of the 
commemorative services, many lessons for study, reflection, and 
improvement in all the years to come. "Tell ye your children 
of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children 
another generation." 

Sincerely yours, 

W. Barton. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



■85 



Yarmouth, Mass., Nov. 8, 18S0. 
Dear Sir, — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of 
the invitation of the First Church in Boston to attend the com- 
memorative services in honor of its completion of two hundred 
and fifty years, and shall be happy to accept it. I shall be happy 
to bear, in a quiet way, the congratulations of the ancient church 
I represent — the seventh in the order of establishment in the 
old colony — to her elder sister of the Colony of Massachusetts 
Bay. 

Respectfully and fraternally yours, 

John W. Dodge. 

Newbury, Mass., Nov. 8, 1880. 
Dear Sir, — I have received the invitation of the First Church 
in Boston to attend the commemorative services in honor of its 
completion of two hundred and fifty years. 

It would give me great pleasure to attend those services if other 
engagements permitted. I am expecting to attend the National 
Triennial Council of Congregational Churches in St. Louis this 
week and next, and therefore shall probably be unable to accept 
your kind invitation. 

In behalf of the First Church in Newbury, I extend hearty 
thanks for your courtesy, and regrets on my own behalf that I 
shall be unable to accept your cordial invitation. 
Very sincerely yours, 

Omar W. Folsom. 

Gloucester, Mass., Nov. ii, 1880. 
Dear Sir, — I regret to say that it will not be convenient for 
me to attend your commemorative services next Thursday. I 
thank you very much for your kind invitation. I trust that your 
venerable church will have to celebrate many, many such joyful 
anniversaries ; and that, though the " First Church in Boston," it 
is still very young compared with the age to which it is to live, 
doing Christ's noblest work. 

Yours respectfully, 

J. S. Thomson. 



1 86 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 



LETTERS FROM OTHER MINISTERS. 

Medfield, Mass., Nov. 9, 1880. 
Gentlemen, — I beg leave to return my grateful acknowledg- 
ment of the honor conferred upon me by the invitation of the 
First Church in Boston to attend the services commemorative of 
the organization of that church, which are to take place on Thurs- 
day, Nov. iSth, and to say that I shall be most hapjDy to be pres- 
ent, if possible, on that occasion. 

Bearing the name of one of the early ministers of that church, 
the Rev. Charles Chauncy, who was the particular friend and 
patron of my father, I shall feel it to be a duty as well as a privi- 
lege to attend these services. 

With great respect, I am, gentlemen, 

Yours very truly, 

Chas. C. Sewall. 

HiNGHAM, Mass., Nov. 9, 18S0. 
Dear Sir, — I am very grateful to you and your associates 
for the invitation to attend the commemorative services of the 
First Church in Boston on the i8th instant. Such occasions have 
a special interest to those who honor the aim and revere the char- 
acters of the men who planted our New England institutions. 

My age and sickness in my family render it so very uncertain 
whether I shall be able to leave home at the time, that propriety 
requires me to decline with great reluctance your kind invita- 
tion. 

With great respect, yours, 

Calvin Lincoln. 



Sunday, Nov. 7, 18S0. 

Gentlemen, — I esteem it an honor to be invited by the First 
Church in Boston to the observance of its two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary. 

It was my privilege fifty years ago to be a worshipper in my 
father's pew in Chauncy Place, and I take pleasure in recalling 
the faces that were lifted towards our minister. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



187 



I am not now so good a hearer as then, and on that account 
must not take the place of some one whose ears will catch all 
the good words of that occasion. May all things conspire to 
bless your services ! 

With loyalty to the First Church, I am yours truly, 

Wm. G. Babcock, 

, Pastor of Warren St. Chapd. 



Boston, Nov. 6, iSSo. 

Honored Sir, — Your kind invitation to meet you on Thurs- 
day, Nov. 1 8th, at two o'clock, for the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the formation of the First Church, has just been 
received, and I am very much obliged to you for the same, al- 
though, from my limited strength, I feel obliged to decline all 
outside calls of this nature. 

I have especial reasons for rejoicing with you in this anniver- 
sary. My father and mother attended the First Church for a 
great many years ; I was for a long while a member of the Sun- 
day-school ; in 1848 I joined the church under Rev. Dr. Froth- 
mgham, and I was at one time a student in theology with Rev. 
Dr. Rufus Ellis : so that you see a large part of my life, that has 
now reached about fifty years, has been interwoven with the his- 
tory of your society ; and when I took my vows as a minister in 
1854, Dr. Ellis was a prominent member of the Council, and 
took an important part in the services of the day. 

It is therefore with great regret that I feel myself forced to 
stay away at the time of your rejoicing. 
Very respectfully, 

Caleb D. Bradlee, 

Pastor of the Church at Harrison Square. 



St. Paul, Minn., Nov. 12, 1S80. 
Mr. G. W. Warren. 

Dear Sir, — I thank you for the invitation to attend the ser- 
vices of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of First Church. 
I cannot come, but with a great multitude of Boston boys, now 



l8S FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Western men, shall watch the newspapers with interest to over- 
hear what you do and say in the mother church, so old and so 
young. 

Yours resjDectfuUy, 

W. C. Gannett. 



Danvers, Mass., nth mo. 9, 18S0. 
Hon. Geo. W. Warren, — My thanks are due for the invita- 
tion to attend the commemorative services on the two hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church in Boston. I regret 
that I am not able to be present on an occasion of such interest 
to Boston and the Commonwealth at large. 
Very truly thy friend, 

John G. Whittier. 

St. Moritz, Upper Engadine, Switzerland, July 14, 1S80. 

Dear Mr. Ellis, — Your invitation to attend the two hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church was received last week 
at Lucerne. Accept my assurance that nothing would give me 
greater pleasure than to accept it and say a hearty word as a lay- 
man now and a child of the church into which in my youth I wms 
admitted to membership. My memory lingers fondly over my 
father,- — his long pastorate ; his devotion to his people ; his fidel- 
it}'^ to the offices of his ministry ; his loyalty to the faith, as he 
apprehended it ; his high aim as a teacher and servant of his 
Master. I recall the day of his successor's installation, and re- 
member some of the words he said on that occasion. Though 
for many years my associations with the ancient church have 
been interrupted by outward circumstances, let me say that my 
sense of the present pastor's constancy and zeal is, as it always 
has been, clear and strong, and my interest in the old church 
steady as ever. May its future be as honorable as its past has 
been ! More than that cannot be asked. 

The occasion suggests thoughts which I might speak but shall 
not attempt to write. My own pulpit ministry ends at about the 
same age with my father's. It pleases me to think that the spirit 
of it was approved by him in his latter years. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



189 



Thank you for your kind wishes respecting my health. It is 
indeed better, and will, I hope, allow me yet to do some work in 
a new field. 

With cordial wishes for the success of your anniversary, and 
remembrances to my old friends who may be privileged to cele- 
brate it, I am 

Faithfully yours, 

O. B, Frothingham. 



Clinton, Mass., Nov. ir, 18S0. 

Dear Sir, — Your invitation to attend the commemorative ser- 
vices in honor of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 
First Church in Boston came duly to hand. 

I regret to write that home duties will not permit me to be 
present at the services the report of which I shall read with so 
much pleasure. 

For a year, during my preparation for the ministry, I was 
superintendent of the First Church Sunday-school, under the su- 
pervision of the then and now pastor. My work in the Sunday- 
school, if of little value to teachers and pupils, was of much 
benefit to myself in fitting me for the ministry, and I found in the 
church another " lecture-room " to supplement those of the Divin- 
ity School. 

For the church and pastor I cherish grateful memories, and 
am glad to have them thus happily called fresh to mind. 
Truly your friend, 

Charles Noves. 



Boston, Nov. 6, 1S80. 
My dear Sir, — I take pleasure in acknowledging your invi- 
tation to the coming anniversary of the First Church. I accept 
it in my own behalf and that of my society with hearty congratu- 
lations upon the noble past record and the present flourishing 
condition of this our elder sister church. 

Most sincerely yours, 

Edward A. Horton, 

Pastor of Second Church. 



igO FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Boston, Nov. 9, 1880. 
My dear Sir, — Your kind letter inviting me to attend the 
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of First 
Church has reached me just as I am getting ready to take the 
cars for St. Louis. It is a great disappointment to me that I 
shall not be able to be at the observances of so important an 
occasion. Especially interesting to me would it be to be present, 
owing to the relations of the First Church to the Old South in 
their early history. I think I can say, in the name of all the Old 
South people, that the daughter sends affectionate greetings to 
the mother. It gives me much pleasure to have this opportunity 
of saying that my relations with your present minister, Rev. Rufus 
Ellis, D.D., have always been most pleasant. I desire also to 
acknowledge his uniform courtesy and kindness to me, and the 
kindness of his parishioners whom I have had the good fortune 
to meet. 

Necessarily in haste, very truly yours, 

J. M. Manning, 

0/J South Parsonage. 

69 Newbury St., Boston, Nov. 9, iSSo. 
Hon. G. W. Warren, — I thank your committee heartily for 
the favor of an invitation to the anniversary exercises of the First 
Church. It will afford me joy to participate in the exercises as 
a listener in cordial sympathy with my brethren and nearest 
neighbors in the communion of the Christian Church. 
Yours fraternally, 

Joseph T. Duryea, 

Pastor of Centi'al Church. 

Washington, D. C, Nov. 10, iSSo. 

Dear Sir, — Your kind invitation to attend the two hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church in Boston was duly 
received. 

I regret being unable to attend the interesting services which 
you will have on that occasion, but am grateful for your invita- 
tion. My engagements here will keep me until next week, and 
make it difficult for me to be present. 



CORRESPONDENCE. I9I 

But I assure you of my hearty sympathy with you in the com- 
memorative services, and of my best wishes for the future pros- 
perity of the grand old First Church in Boston. 
Truly yours, 

C. A. Staples, 

Pastor of First Cong. Church, Providence, R. I. 



Providence, R. I., Nov. 9, 1880. 
My dear Sir, — It gives me very great pleasure to accept the 
invitation of the First Church to attend the commemorative ser- 
vices on Thursday, Nov. i8th. 

I am, with great respect, 

J. Lewis Diman.^ 



Brooklyn, N. Y., Nov. 17, 1880. 
My dear Sir, — It is with bitter disappointment that I am 
obliged, in consequence of a slight indisposition, to say that it 
will not be in my power to attend the impressive anniversary ser- 
vices of the First Church to-morrow afternoon. No occasion for 
these many years has had such attractions for me, and, after re- 
ceiving and accepting your kind invitation to be present, I had 
fully purposed to be with you ; but my physician orders other- 
wise, and I must submit. But I am sure you will permit me to 
say how heartily my people and their minister rejoice with your 
ancient church at such an hour as this. 

^ Feb. 4, 1881. As this little volume is passing through the press there 
comes the sad intelligence that Dr. Diman died yesterday in Providence, 
R. I., after a very short illness. He was before all the Congregational minis- 
ters who are known as "orthodox," certainly in this neighborhood, in the 
offer of an exchange of pulpits to a Unitarian clergyman- At his invitation 
we took each the other's place, on Sunday, May 10, 1863, he officiating in 
First Church and I in his house of worship in Brookline. Dr. Diman was a 
frequent and most welcome preacher to our congregation, and the writer of 
this note was just proposing to invite him to take his place for a Sunday 
when the tidings came that he had been summoned hence. He is gone, but 
his work remains. Somewhere, if not here, " man is immortal until his work 
is done." — R. E. 



192 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

May the close of the two hundred and fifty years to come find 
your successors as vigorous and earnest and happy as you all are 
to-day! 

Cordially yours, 

A. P. Putnam. 



Providence, R. I., Nov. 9, 1880. 

My dear Sir, — It would give me very great pleasure to attend 
the anniversary exercises of the First Church, on Thursday, Nov. 
i8th, if my engagements on that day should permit. I fear, 
however, that I shall be debarred the privilege. The occasion 
must be one of the greatest interest, not only to the parish imme- 
diately concerned, but to all of our New England churches, and I 
shall certainly consider it a great loss to myself to be deprived of 
the pleasure of engaging in the commemoration. 

Thanking the gentlemen of the Committee of Invitation for 
their kindness, I am 

Very truly and faithfully yours, 

A. WOODBURV, 
Pastor of Westminsttr Church. 



Portland, Me., Nov. 9, 18S0. 
My dear Sir, — I am very sorry that I shall not be able to 
leave home at the time of your church anniversary to which you 
so kindly invite me, for Nov. i8th, as I should enjoy the occasion 
and the meeting with the friends and brethren. 

Very respectfully and truly yours, 

Thomas Hill. 



Letter from Orville Dewey, D.D. 

Sheffield, M.\ss., Nov. ii, iSSo. 
Dr. Dewey regrets that his health will not permit him to attend 
the very interesting services to be held by the First Church of 
Boston on the iSth of November. 



CORRESPONDENCE. I93 

Boston, Nov. 9, 1880. 

My dear Sir, — I accept with much pleasure the invitation 
of the members of the First Church of Boston to join with them 
in their commemorative services on Thursday, Nov. i8th. 

To me the invitation is of special interest, because, in England, 
of my having had, at one point and another in my earlier life, to 
meet and judge that same stream of influence to escape which 
the Puritans left Old England and made for the Bay of Massa- 
chusetts. 

I was born in a town from which, even because of his excel- 
lence, Richard Baxter was excluded, as you certainly would think, 
through the malicious operation of an act of Parliament. And it 
happened to me, also, at a month old, to be baptized in that same 
parish church at which once that great Christian was a minister. 
In Boston, as also in Salem and Roxbury, two hundred years ago, 
there was perhaps no name of a living Englishman which was 
dearer than that of the Rev. Richard Baxter. And that popular- 
ity was not without a good reason for it, apart from his having 
been the great controversialist of his day, and the largest relig- 
ious writer of his time, and the author, in particular, of "The 
Saints' Everlasting Rest." 

Two hundred and fifty years ! and spent — all of them — like 
a tale that is told ! Puritan and Psalmist, both alike as to that 
sense of life ! However, in Boston, life has, with earnest liv- 
ing, turned to noble and enduring history. And the narrative 
has another effect and probably a grander moral than any tale 
ever had, told by an Eastern story-teller to fascinated listeners, 
whether at the gate of a city or out among the tents. Magna est 
Veritas et prcEvalebit, and because of what truth was in them, and 
because of the manner in which, with more or less clearness and 
certitude, they have lived by it from the beginning, it has hap- 
pened to the people of Boston, under God, politically and largely 
also in other ways, that at this present time " there is no speech 
nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone 
out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." 

I wish you all joy in your coming commemoration ; and you 
have good reason to feel it. 

I am yours faithfully, 

William Mountford. 
13 



194 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Florence, Italy, Dec. 13, 1880. 
Dear Mr. Ellis, — Mr. Shattuck has kindly lent me his copy 
of the " Register," with your sermon on your late anniversary oc- 
casion, and the " Advertiser," with a report of all the doings. 
Let me congratulate you, not only on the success, but on the high 
tone of all the exercises. It must have been a happy and a proud 
time. I especially enjoyed your brother's speech and your ser- 
mon, with the closing paragraph of which I am heartily in sym- 
pathy. Both the historical and the spiritual chords were nobly 
struck, and their fine music will be heard far beyond the limits of 
Boston and the boundaries of Unitarianism. A better use of 
the occasion could not, in my judgment, have been made. I 
hope that all the proceedings will be published and widely dis- 
tributed. 

Faithfully yours, 

O. B. Frothingham. 



LETTER FROM HON. G. W. CURTIS. 

West New Brighton, N. Y., Nov. 12, iSSo. 

My dear Sir, — I am very sorry that it is impossible for me 
to accept the cordial invitation of the First Church in Boston to 
attend the celebration of its two hundred and fiftieth birthday. 

As I think of its long and illustrious history, and of the pro- 
found influence upon America and the world which the First 
Church in Boston represents, I am glad to know that " time can- 
not wither her," and that her prosperity and liberality still symbol- 
ize the progressive Puritanism upon which America is built. Our 
fathers, indeed, came from many countries, and were of various 
faiths; but with all our differences of origin, and through all our 
history, from the deposition of Andros to Bunker Hill, and from 
the Declaration of Independence to the Proclamation of Emanci- 
pation, the dominant power in American civilization has been the 
genius of Puritan England. 

May the First Church in Boston live and prosper, and may her 
five hundredth birthday find her and her cause, like Milton's 



CORRESPONDENCE. jo^ 

noble and puissant nation, " as an eagle mewing her mighty youth 
and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam."^ 
Very truly yours, 

George William Curtis. 



FROM FORMER PARISHIONERS. 

350 Marlborough St., Boston, Nov. 9, iSSo. 
Dear Sir, — I am obliged by your kind remembrance of me on 
the commemorative occasion of the two hundred and fiftieth an- 
niversary of the founding of the First Church, and if the infirmi- 
ties of old age do not prevent me I shall have great pleasure in 
being present with you. 

Very truly yours, 

Edward Reynolds. 

Boston, Nov. 9, 1S80. 
My dear Sir, — I have just received the card of invitation to 
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church, 
which it gives me much pleasure to accept. 

As I was christened by the Rev. Mr. Emerson more than eighty 
years ago, and as my interest has always been reverently cher- 
ished for the old church, I shall certainly be present on the iSlh 
instant. 

Very truly yours, 

Chas. Hickling. 

RoxBURV, Cedar Square, Nov. 6, 18S0. 
My dear Sir, — I feel highly honored in receipt of your invi- 
tation to attend the commemorative services in honor of the First 
Church. I have a right to feel an interest in the occasion, as 
my father and mother attended said church, where I was christ- 
ened, and also nine brothers and sisters. I am the only survivor 
of the family. It will give me great pleasure to attend. 
Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

S. Parkman Blake. 



196 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Boston, Nov. ii, 1880. 
To the Committee of the First Church, Boston. 

Gentlemen, — Your official and cordial invitation to attend 
the commemorative services of the First Church, having been 
received, is gratefully acknowledged, and with great pleasure 

accepted. 

Most respectfully yours, 

Lewis G. Pray. 



FROM A DESCENDANT OF JOHN COTTON. 

9 Arlington St., Boston, Nov. 9, 1880. 
My dear Sir, — I am very much obliged for the invitation to 
attend the commemorativ^e services in honor of the two hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church, and will thankfully 
receive the admission ticket. As a lineal descendant of John 
Cotton, the second minister of the church, and of Governors 
Dudley and Bradstreet, who were among its first members, I feel 
a great interest in the celebration. 

Yours truly, 

James W. Austin. 



The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company was represented by the 
commander and staff, and had time permitted would have been heard from 
on the occasion. 

Boston, Nov. 15, 1880. 
Hon. G. Wasjiington Warren. 

Dear Sir, — Permit me to thank your committee, in behalf of 
my command, for the invitation extended to myself and the offi- 
cers of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company to be 
present at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary exercises of 
your society on the i8th November. It will give us great pleas- 
ure to accept your polite invitation. 

John Adams, in his writings upon government, more than once 
said that the four corner-stones of a State were " the town-meet- 
ing, the school, the church, and the militia." 

Three of these corner-stones, represented by the First Church 
of Boston, Harvard College, and the Ancient and Honorable 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



197 



Artillery Company, will meet at your anniversary after an exist- 
ence of nearly two hundred and fifty years. 

The first charter granted by the General Court of Massachu- 
setts was to Harvard College, in 1636. The second, and for a 
very long time the only other, was to the Ancient and Honorable 
Artillery Company, on the 17th of March, 1638. 

Lewis, in his " History of Lynn," says : " 1638, first Monday 
in June, A. and H. A. Company organized ; between three and 
four P.M. there was a very great earthquake." What connection, 
if any, there may have been between these two circumstances I am 
unable to say. Perhaps to typify the shock of arms, or to shake 
our organization together so firmly that the march of time should 
bring with increasing years no sign of weakness or decay. 

Our first commander, Robert Keayne, was a member of the 
Honorable Artillery Company of London. 

He came to this country, it is thought, in 1634, and lived where 
the Old State House now stands. He was a man of very strong 
will, and he left one of the longest wills upon record. 

He was received into Boston Church March 20, 1635-6. 

He was a brother-in-law of the first pastor of your church, John 
Wilson, by whom the first sermon was preached to our corps. 

I find, by our company's history, that nearly all the pastors that 
have been settled over your church have, in their time, preached 
our annual election sermon ; and until 1868, with scarcely an 
exception, our services were held in your meeting-houses. 

Thus the relation between two of the " corner-stones " of our 
old Commonwealth — the church and the militia — is very near; 
and it seems appropriate as well as very pleasant to us who will 
represent the latter, still young and vigorous in its wealth of 
years, to join with you in this the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary of the former, your venerable and revered society. 

It is the intention of our company to prepare a suitable box to 
contain an account of our participation in the two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of our city and other matters 
connected with the history of the corps, together with letters mis- 
sive from distinguished writers upon the most important interests 
of the day, the box to be opened one hundred years hence. 

Should it be the wish of your committee, we would be pleased 



198 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

to deposit therein the memorial of your church history which I 
understand is to be prepared. 

In conclusion, let us fervently hope that the precepts taught by 
the church may so permeate our beloved country that the active 
services of the militia shall seldom be needed. 
Yours very truly, 

Chas. W. Stevens, 
Conujiander A. and II. A. Company. 



82 Water St., Room 10, Boston, Nov. ii, iSSo. 
RUFUS Ellis, D.D., Pastor of the First Church, Boston, Mass. 

Dear Sir, — My attention has been called to the proposed 
celebration of the two hundred and fihieth anniversary of the 
founding of the First Church. 

We find that the founder of our company, Robert Keayne, was, 
on the 17th day of March, 1638, ordered by Governor John Win- 
throp to organize " The Military Company of the Massachusetts." 
{^Previous to 1738 the name was changed to " Honorable Artillery 
Company," same as the London Company, of which Robert 
Keayne was a member before he came to this country, and again 
in 1738 to Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company.) 

On the first Monday in June, 1638, Rev. John Wilson, brother- 
in-law of Robert Keayne, preached the first election sermon before 
the company, and we suppose that he preached in his own meet- 
ing-house. With hardly an exception, save eight years during the 
Revolution, from 1638 to this time, the Artillery election sermon 
has been annually preached, and, until the removal of the First 
Church from Chauncy Place, was preached for the whole or a 
very large part of the time in the meeting-house of the First 
Church. 

Thinking that the historic connection of our company with the 
First Church may not have attracted your attention, I have taken 
the liberty of referring to it ; and it might not be inappropri- 
ate that our commander, officers' staff, and past commanders 
should be present at your anniversary, and that your proceedings 
be transmitted with our collection. 

Very respectfully yours, 

Edward Wvman. 




V ^^ X x/ 




APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



COVENANT OF FIRST CHURCH. 

In the name of Our Lord yestcs Christ, and in obedience to his 
holy will and divine ordinance, - — 

We, whose names are hereunder written, being by His most wise 
and good providence brought together into this part of America, in 
the Bay of Massachusetts ; and desirous to unite ourselves into one 
Congregation or Church under the Lord Jesus Christ, our head, in 
such sort as becometh all those whom he hath redeemed and sanc- 
tified to himself, — do hereby solemnly and religiously (as in his 
most holy presence) promise and bind ourselves to walk in all our 
ways according to the rule of the gospel, and in all sincere con- 
formity to his holy ordinances, and in mutual love and respect each 
to other, so near as God shall give us grace. 

John Winthrop, Governor. 
Thomas Dudley, D. Governor. 
IsAACK Johnson. 
John Wilson. 



ROLL OF THE MINISTERS OF THE FIRST CHURCH. 

John Wilson. Installed as teacher, Aug. 27, 1630; as pastor, Nov. 23, 

1632. Died Aug. 7, 1667, aged 78. 
John Cotton. Installed as teacher, Oct. 17, 1633. Died Dec. 23, 1652, 

aged 67. 
John Norton. Installed as teacher, July 23, 1656. Died April 5, 1663, 

aged 57. 
John Davenport. Installed as teacher, Dec. 9, 1668. Died Mar. 15, 1670, 

aged 72. 



202 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

James Allen. Installed as teacher, Dec. 9, 166S. Died Sept. 22, 17 10, 

aged 78. 
John Oxenbridge. Installed as teacher, April 10, 1670. Died Dec. 28, 

1674, aged 65. 
Joshua Moody. Installed as assistant, May 3, 16S4. Died July 4, 1697, 

aged 65. 
John Bailey. Installed as assistant, July 17, 1693. Died Dec. 12, 1697, 

aged 53. 
Benjamin Wadsworth. Ordained Sept. 8, 1696; chosen President of Har- 
vard College, 1725. Died Mar. 12, 1737, aged 67. 
Tho.mas Bridge. Installed May 10, 1705. Died Sept. 26, 17 15, aged 58. 
Thomas Foxcroft. Ordained Nov. 20, 1717. Died June 18, 1769, aged 72. 
Charles Chauncy, D.D. Ordained Oct. 25, 1727. Died Feb. 10, 1787, 

aged 82. 
John Clark, D.D. Ordained July 8, 1778. Died April i, 1798, aged 42. 
William Emerson. Installed Oct. 16, 1799. Died May 12, 1811, aged 42. 
John L. Abbot. Ordained July 14, 1813. Died Oct. 17, 1814, aged 31. 
Nathaniel L. Frothingham, D.D. Ordained Mar. 15, 1815. Resigned 

March, 1850. 
RUFUS Ellis, D.D. Installed May 4, 1853. 



FORMER HOUSES OF WORSHIP. 

The first house of worship was erected on State Street, corner of Devon- 
shire, site of the present Brazer's Building, A.D. 1632. Upon the land in the 
rear, now known as the Prince estate, were horse-sheds used by those who 
rode to church. 

The second was built on the present site of Joy's Building, on Washington 
Street, then called Cornhill, A.D. 1640, and was consumed by fire, Oct. 2, 
1711. Rebuilt on the same spot, A.D. 1713, and for many years known as 
the "Old Brick," a very imposing structure. 

The fourth was erected in Chauncy Place, A.D. 1808. Services were held 
in it fpr the last time. May 10, 1S6S. 

The corner-stone of the present house of worship was laid April 4, 1867, 
and the house was dedicated Dec. 10, 1868. The church holds it free of debt, 
and it may aptly be said to realize the vision of John Wilson. 



THE COMMUNION PLATE. 

The following is a description prepared by the late Rev. Dr. Frothingham 
of the pieces of communion plate given to the church in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. Other pieces have been given during the present 
century, the whole service being composed of the gifts of church-members. 
The church proper, or the body of conmiunicants, holds also charity funds 
amounting in all to nearly $20,000. 



APPENDIX. 203 

1. A silver basin for baptisms, with a coat of arms engraved on the rim, 
and "J. Hurd" stamped in the cemre. 

2. A flagon, with a coat of arms engraved in front, and an inscription under- 
neath : "The Gift of the Hon'il"" William Dummer Esq. to the First Church 
in Boston, 1726." 

3. A similar flagon, with the inscription within an ornamented oval : " The 
Gift of Deacon Thomas Waite to the First Church of Christ in Boston, May 

15. I775-" 

4. A tall embossed cup, with engraving and figures in relief, and this in- 
scription written round the rim : "The Gift of Governor Jn° Winthrop to 
y^ I' Church in Boston." 

5. Three ornamented cups, lettered on the sides : " The Gift of Elder Joseph 
Bridgham to the First Church in Boston, 170S." 

6. A similar cup, with the inscription on the side : " The Gift of James 
Everitt to the First Church in Boston, 1705." 

8. A plain cup, with this inscription: "The Gift of a Friend R * H." 
These letters, B) (C, also are faintly visible. Date, 1661, written on the 
bottom. 

11. Three large plain cups, inscribed, "The Gift of Jn? Oxenbridge." 

12. A pair of cups, engraved on one side with a coat of arms, and on the 
other with this inscription in an ornamented cartouche: "The Gift of Mrs. 
Lydia Hancock to the First Church of Christ in Boston, Sept. 4, 1773." 

17. A pair of tankards, lettered, "The Gift of Sam!! More to the First 
Church in Boston, 1717." 

18 Another tankard, a cartouche in front with the inscription : " The Gift 
of Nathaniel Balston Esq. to the First Church of Christ in Boston, 1773." 
On the handle are the initials, N. H. 

19 Another tankard, with the inscription in an ornamented cartouche: 

"The Gift of Madam Eliz : Welsteed to the First Church in Boston, I7q2." 

W ^ ' -> 

Initials on the handle, W. " E. 

20. A pair of cans, with a coat of arms engraved on the front, and under- 
neath the inscription : "The Gift of Deacon Jonathan Williams to the First 
Church of Christ in Boston, at his decease, March 27, 1737." 

21. A can, inscribed, "The Gift of John Forland to the First Church of 
Christ in Boston, for the use of the Table, 17 17." 

22. Two massy tumblers, enchased, with the letters, B "^^ C, one of them 
bearing the date 1659 under the initials. 

23. A vase, figured with birds and flowers, bearing on the bottom the ini- 
tials, R. ^- E. 

26. Four dishes, with the inscription round their rims : " Given bv Suviah 
Thayer, in testimony of her respect for the First Church of Christ in Boston. 
A.D. 1796." 



204 FIRST CHURCH KN BOSTON. 



USHERS ON THE DAY OF COMMEMORATION. 

S. Henry Hooper. John S. Tebbetts. 

E. Pelham Dodd. Henry G. French. 

Henry G. Hall Charles Pfaff. 

Joseph W. Warren. Frederic B. Holder. 

Charles H. Whiting. John F. Moors. 

George R. R. Rivers. 



ADDRESS AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE 

OF THE 

FIFTH HOUSE OF WORSHIP OF THE FIRST CHURCH, 

By Rev. RUFUS ELLIS, Minister of tlte Church, 

April 4, 1S67 (Fast Day). 

The First Church of Christ in Boston lays to day the corner- 
stone of its fifth house of worship. 

In the summer of the year of our Lord 1630, the fathers of the 
congregation met under the sheher of a wide-spreading tree for 
their first public act of worship ; and, for the space of about two 
years, the company of disciples broke bread from house to house. 
Upon the return from England of their first pastor, the Rev. 
John Wilson, they erected a simple building of wood and earth, 
not unlike the log-cabins of our Western world, and, until 1640, 
sheltered therein the ark of God. This very humble sanctuary 
stood on the south side of what is now known as State Street. 
The congregation then passed first to a wooden, and afterwards 
to a brick, meeting-house on the spot which is now covered by 
Joy's Building, where they remained until the 21st of July, 1808, 
when their pastor, the Rev. William Emerson, preached the 
dedication sermon of the present house of worship on Channcy 
Street, and the workmen commenced the demolition of what had 
been known since 17 13, first as the Brick Meeting-house, and, 
with the lapse of years, as the Old Brick Meeting-house. 

It has been thought that the interests of the congregation 
would be promoted by another removal. Therefore we are here 
to-day, and have already asked the blessing of God upon our ' 



APPENDIX. 



205 



new and serious undertaking. It is fitting that a few words 
should be spoken concerning the trust which the God of our 
fathers has committed to our keeping. 

I need not remind you that, however little it may have cost 
us, this inheritance was bought for us at a great price. Men 
and women do not cross the stormy sea and found a city in the 
wilderness and amongst savages, to keep holiday. The plant- 
ing of this church was to our fathers a very serious business ; 
the Christian congregation was to them the very heart of their 
Commonwealth ; and, however much we may garnish their sep- 
ulchres, and set up tablets to their memory, we really put them 
to open shame unless we fill up what is behind of their honor- 
able labors and patient endurance. And, if we will enter into 
their earnest spirit, we shall make haste to say that our trust 
fi-om them is twofold, that we have to keep, living and fresh and 
growing in the world, two great traditions, — two and yet one, 
for the two agree in one, — the tradition of Christianity and the 
tradition of freedom in Christianity. Our fathers planted this 
church because they were Christians, because their religion 
was more to them than anything and everything else in the 
world ; and they planted it in the wilderness, leaving their pleas- 
ant English homes because they were Christians, according to 
that word in Christ which is not bound. 

Now, as of old, in laying this corner-stone, we repeat the old 
baptismal words. We say, " In the name of the Father and the 
Son and the Holy Ghost," and " Other foundation can no man 
lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ," in whom we have 
the absolute manifestation and the ever-abiding presence and the 
ever-redeeming power of that God who is love, that God who in 
the life of his Son has opened his whole heart to the world, and 
completed in him all the religious and moral possibilities of 
our humanity, so that no man can add anything unto him, or 
take anything from him. Following this Dayspring from on 
high, our fathers crossed the ocean. We have this day, and 
we desire to have, no other guidance. We ask for no church 
save the church of Christ and of his Holy Spirit, still and ever- 
•more proceeding. The heart of humanity still saith, as ear- 
nestly and affectionately as ever, nay, with ever-deepening 



206 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

enthusiasm, as the burden of civilization presses more and more 
heavily, " Lord, unto whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words 
of eternal life." 

And even because this word from heaven was so altogether 
suflficient, and so altogether blessed unto them, our fathers must 
needs hold it as it was in the beginning, is now, and evermore 
shall be, in freedom from all human devices, prescriptions, and 
imaginations. They had heard the w^ord of the Apostle speaking 
to them also in the latter days : " Stand fast therefore in the 
liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not entan- 
gled again in any yoke of bondage." He seemed to be saying 
to them, in their peculiar circumstances and with their peculiar 
temptations, " If you conform as of obligation to the rituals of 
the outward church, Christ shall profit you nothing ; " and they 
left their own houses, like the old patriarch, to walk with God' 
in Christ, though they knew that his way would be in the 
sea, and his path through the great waters, and that their feet 
would be pierced with desert thorns. We believe that as adher- 
ents to an unbound Christianity, a Christianity that hears none 
but Christ, and is not careful to get any human indorsement of 
its orthodoxy, we are the legitimate children of the fathers 
of this' church. We believe that we stand, if not precisely where 
they stood in that day, yet substantially where they would have 
stood to-day, ready to follow the well-instructed scribe, spoken 
of by our Saviour, who brings forth from the treasury things 
new and old, to accept with them whatever was real and vital in 
what is called their orthodoxy, all the old verities of Christian 
history and Christian experience ; and yet equally ready to inter- 
pret these verities according to that word of the Apostle which 
bids us add knowledge to our faith, — in modern phrase, science to 
religion, — and those greater words of Jesus, "Why even of your 
own selves judge ye not what is right?" and "Sanctify them by 
thy truth." 

It is with profound satisfaction that we reflect that our liberty 
also is an inheritance. Let me remind you of some striking 
words of Mr. Edmund Burke, and lay claim to them as fulfilled 
in us. " It has been," he says, " the uniform policy of our consti- 
tution to claim and assert our liberties as an entailed inheritance, 



APPENDIX. 



207 



devised to us from our fathers, and to be transmitted to our pos- 
terity. This idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of 
conservation, and a sure principle of transmission, without at all 
excluding a principle of improvement. In what we improve we 
are never wholly new ; in what we retain we are never wholly 
obsolete. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized fore- 
fathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and 
excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. By this means our 
liberty becomes a noble freedom ; it carries an imposing and 
majestic aspect ; it has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors ; it 
has its bearings and ensigns armorial ; it has its gallery of por- 
traits, its monumental inscriptions, its records, evidences, and 
titles." 

We rebuild our church, if not our house of worship, on the old 
foundations. Our church covenant is the fathers' covenant. We 
have no desire, no purpose, to change a word or so much as a 
letter of it ; but we do hope to gain a deeper interpretation, and 
to come into a larger and better use of the truth which it seeks 
to express. We hope to rear a building that shall shelter many 
generations of Christian disciples, worshippers, believers, work- 
ers ; a multitude ready to receive the truth as from time to time 
it shall break forth, beautiful as the morning light, from the word 
of God, ready to carry forward the special work of Christ as it 
shall be discovered from time to time in this city of our affec- 
tions, ready to meet Him in whom mercy rejoiceth against judg- 
ment, and whose word can be believed, and whose law is fulfilled 
only in love. 

It is a custom of great antiquity to lay the corner-stone of 
every j^ublic structure with religious observances. The historian 
Tacitus tells us that silver and gold and the less precious metals, 
all unwrought but in great profusion, were laid under the corner- 
stone of the old Roman Capitol an offering to the gods of the 
nations. Following the same spirit, but guided by a higher wis- 
dom, and looking for a nobler habitation, we have begun our 
work with prayer to God, and with these commemorative words ; 
depositing also for the eyes of those who shall come after us, in 
what we trust will be a very distant age, a few memorials of the 
swiftly passing hour. 



2o8 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

We believe that our work has been well begun, and that it is 
in the hands of men whom the Lord hath made wise-hearted to 
devise and to execute, even as when the Hebrews fashioned the 
tabernacle in the wilderness. May it go forward until we shall 
raise the headstone thereof wiih shoutings, crying, " Grace, 
grace unto it ! " May it go forward in all integrity and in all 
charity, and in remembrance of the good word of old, " Except 
the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it ;" and 
to that Lord, the " King eternal, immortal, and invisible, the only 
wise God, be honor and glory, through Jesus Christ, forever 
and ever. Amen." 



DESCRIPTION OF CHURCH AND CHAPEL WINDOWS. 

The windows in the church, although exhibiting a variety in 
treatment and handling, which greatly enhances their interest, are 
all constructed upon the same principle, being of what is called 
mosaic glass-work as distinguished from enamel painting. They 
are elevated high above the eye, to avoid disagreeable cross- 
lights. They are all filled with English glass, executed in Lon- 
don, in accordance with the architects' sketches. Seven in the 
church and two in the chapel are the gifts of members of the 
society. The church windows, though the work of different 
makers, all follow the same general design. A broad border sur- 
rounds a central field of ornamental work, the upper part of 
which is occupied by the half figure of an angel in a circle. 
Near the bottom of each window is a figure, subject, or picture 
extending across both the ornament and the borders. The 
subjects of those in the body of the church are " St. John at the 
Last Supper," by Messrs. Lyon & Co.; "The Syro- Phoenician 
Woman," by Messrs. Saunders & Co. ; and "The Good Samar- 
itan," executed by Messrs. Heaton, Butler, and Bayne. This 
window is erected "In memory of John Eliot Thayer." The 
window opposite this represents the Transfiguration, with the 
three disciples in the foreground and above the figure of Christ, 
in a glory of the form of a vesica piscis, with Moses and Elias. 
This window was the gift of the late Mr. Turner Sargent. At 



APPENDIX. 



209 



either end of the transepts are similar windows, but of much 
greater size, being nearly twenty feet high. Those in the north 
transept contain full-length figures, about the size of life, of St. 
John and St. Paul. The subjects beneath are " The Women and 
the Angel at the Sepulchre " and the " Departure of Paul from 
Ephesus." The St. John window is erected " In memory of 
Peter Chardon Brooks." The St. Paul window is erected " In 
memory of Thomas Beale Wales." The south transept is occu- 
pied by windows of similar size, containing, in the place of the 
Apostles opposite, inscriptions relating to the history of the 
church. On one is the ancient covenant under which the church 
was gathered in 1630, signed by Governor Winthrop, Governor 
Dudley, "and ninety others, men and women." Beneath is the 
"Vision of the Man of Macedonia," — the carrying of the gospel 
into Europe having been considered by the founders of this 
church as the prototype of its introduction into America, the 
text " Come over and help us " occurring in the original seal of 
the Colony. The other window contains a list of the ministers 
of the church during the two hundred and fifty years since its 
foundation. Beneath are figures of the four Evangelists. These 
four windows are by Messrs. Lavers, Barraud, and Westlake. 
The other windows were furnished out of the funds of the so- 
ciety, and consist for the most part merely of decorative work. 
The great Rose, however, at the end of the church, over the 
entrance, contains in the centre a figure of the Lamb, and about 
it a choir of angels singing and playing upon various instru- 
ments. In the north transept is also a small window, nearly on 
a level with the eye, containing, in four compartments, the story 
of the Prodigal Son. All these windows are the work of Messrs. 
Clayton & Bell, also of London. 

The two stained windows in the chapel are products of Amer- 
ica, and have been given since the completion of the church. 
Unfortunately the conditions of the light are not favorable to 
the fullest development of their color. They are interesting 
specimens of the ultra-mosaic system. It would be difficult to 
find pictorial windows of a like importance, in which the brush 
had been less sparingly used. The central composition of the 
right-hand window, " In memory of Fanny Cabot Paine,"' repre- 

H 



2IO FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

sents St. Christopher fording the stream with the infant Christ 
on his shoulder. The effect is that of pale starlight. In the 
execution of this window, the so-called " rolled " glass has been 
almost exclusively employed. In both figures and ornament the 
line alone has been employed to indicate form. This window 
was set up in 1879. 

The left-hand window, " In memory of Gurdon Saltonstall," 
set up in 1880, is devoted to incidents in the life of David; the 
central composition depicting him as he descends into the valley 
to meet the Philistine giant and calling on the Lord for help. 
This figure is carefully modelled by the "stippling" process. 
The other figures and accessories are less elaborately treated. 

The " antique " glass has been employed throughout, and is 
of the richest description. The leadings are delicate and fre- 
quent. Both windows were designed and supervised by Fred- 
eric Crowninshield, and were executed by Donald McDonald. 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



Abbott, Rev. John L., tribute to, 87. 

Adams, John, 196. 

Ainsworth, Henry, 15. 

Allen, Rev. James, tribute to, 85. 

Ancient and Honorable Artillery 

Company, 196-198. 
Antinomianism, account of, 39-4S. 
Aspinwall, , chosen deacon at the 

organization of the First Church, 

14. 
Austin, James W., letter from, 196. 

Babcock, Rrj. William G., letters 
from, 186. 

Bacon, Francis ; Lord Verula7n, 82. 

Bailey, Rez\ John, tribute to, 86. 

Barton, Rev. W., letter from, 1S4. 

Baxter, Rev. Richard, 193. 

Blackstone, Rev. William, 102. 

Blake, S. Parkman, letter from, 195. 

Blaxton, , 15. 

Blenkin, Rev. G. B., of Boston, Eng., 
letter from, 179. 

Boston, from whence it derived its 
name, 84, 85. 

Bradford, Gov. William, 116, 170. 

Bradlee, Rev. Caleb D , letter from, 
187. 

Bridge, Rev. Thomas, tribute to, 86. 

Briggs, Geo. W., D.D.., address of, at 
the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary of the First Church, 169. 

Britton, , whipped for criticising 

the churches, 51. 

Brooks, Rrj. Charles T., hymn by, 
sung at the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the First Church, 
172. 



Brooks, Peter Chardon, window in 
the First Church erected in mem- 
ory of, 209. 

Brooks, Rev. Phillips, address of, at 
the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary of the First Church, '156. 

Brown, Elder Richard, his heresy re- 
garding the Church of Rome, 18. 

Burke, Edmund, quoted, 206. 

Chalmers, Thomas, D.D., his popu- 
larity as a preacher, 22. 

Charlestown, Indian name for, 4. 

Chauncy, Charles, D.D., tribute to, 
86. 

Clarke, John, D.D., tribute to, 86. 

Coddington, , 16. 

Common Prayer, Book of, its disuse 
by the Puritans, and the reasons 
therefor, 102, et seq. 

Cooke, Thomas Smalley, 182. 

Q.o\Xo\\, Rev. ]o\\r\, 5, ID, II, 19, 34, 
52-54. 59. 61, 79, 109, no, 119, 
132, 142, 153; birthplace of, 12; 
pastor of Church of St. Botolph in 
England, 21; accomplishments as 
a scholar and preacher, 21, 22; 
forced by his irregularities as a 
Dissenter to fly to America, 22, 23 ; 
example of his extreme Congrega- 
tionalism, 23 ; becomes the teacher 
of the First Church, 23 ; his famous 
Thursday lecture, 32, 33; his re- 
ply to the proposition of English 
peers to join the Massachusetts 
Colony, 37 ; his tendency towards 
Antinomianism, 41, 44, 46; feels 
called upon to deplore the same, 



214 



FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 



and explains how he had been de- 
ceived by it, 49, 50; invited to visit 
England in 1643, 55! tiibutes to, 
84,85, 156-158. 
Curtis, lion. G. W., letter from, 194. 

D'AuLNEY, , 59. 

Davenport, Ren. John, 142, 144; in- 
vited to visit England in 1643, 55 '■> 
tribute to, 85. 

Devens, lion. Charles, letter from, 

177- 

Dewey, Orville, D.D., letter from, 
192. 

Diman, Rro. ]. Lewis, letter from, 
191. See also note. 

Dodge, Rev. John W., letter from, 
185. 

Dudley, Thomas, 16, 18, 24, 29 ; one 
of the first four signers of the cove- 
nant of the First Church, 7 ; ac- 
count of, 8. 

Duryea, Joseph T., D.D., reads a 
chapter from the Bible at the two 
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
the First Church, 96; letter from, 
190. 

ECCLESIASTICISM, in early New Eng- 
land, 61, 62. 

Eliot, Pres. Charles W., address of, 
at the two hundred and fiftieth an- 
niversary of the First Church, 136. 

Eliot, Rev. John. 33 ; took temporary 
charge of the First Church during 
Wilson's absence in England, 17. 

Ellis, Arthur B., xix, xx. 

Ellis, George E. D.D., xviii, xx ; 
address of, at the two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of the First 
Church, 98. 

Ellis, Rufus, D.D , 113, 121, 125, 132, 
135, 142, 143, 151, 155, 161, 166, 
167, 169, 172; historical sermons 
by, preached to the First Church 
on the occasion of the two hun- 
dred and fiftieth anniversary, 3-87 ; 
bust of, 92 ; prayer by, 95 ; address 
of, at the laying of the corner-stone 
of the fifth house of worship of the 
First Church, 204. 



Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 94. 

Emerson, Rev. William, the historian 
of the First Church, 61, 76 n , 204 : 
statistics concerning the New Eng- 
land churches up to 1652,64; tri. 
bute to, 86. 

Endecott, Gov. John, 34. 

Evarts, Hon. William M., letter from, 

177- 

Everett, Prof. C. C, D.D , address 
of, at the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the First Church, 
i6i. 

Everett, Edward, 132. 

Everett, William, poem by, read at 
the two hundred and fiftieth an- 
niversary of the First Church, 
132. 

Fessendex, W. H., 174. 

First Church in Boston, annual meet- 
ing of the proprietors held April 
15, 1879, ^' > proceedings prelimi- 
nary to the celebration of its two 
hundred and fiftieth anniversary, 
xi-xx; report of the committee ap- 
pointed to consider measures for 
the same, xi, xii ; the committee 
of twelve appointed to make all 
necessary arrangements, xiii ; re- 
port of this committee, xiii, xiv ; 
sub-committees appointed, xiv, xv; 
account of its participation in the 
celebration of the two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of the settle- 
ment of Boston, xv-xix; date of its 
birth and story of its formation, 
2,et seq.; its four founders, 7 ; their 
purpose and ho])e, and the difficul- 
ties by which they were met, 13 ; 
the date and the manner of its 
formal organization, 14; its inde- 
pendence of the ritual, 14, 15; its 
favorite tunes, 15; contribution of 
a fund for the purpose of building, 
20 ; location of the building erected, 
20 ; withdrawal of the Charles- 
town members, 21 ; character of 
its religious faith, 24-26; impor- 
tant ])eriod in its history, 2S-30 ; 
its ministry among the Indians, 30, 



INDEX. 



215 



31, 62 ; its growth and religious 
work, 31, 32 ; Thursday and its 
famous lecture, 32, 33 ; the council 
of ministers that was called, and 
the two questions proposed for dis- 
cussion, 34; the first trace of the 
existence of an employment so- 
ciety in, 39; the story of the Anti- 
nomianism of, 39-4S ; the inculca- 
tion of morals which followed, 51, 
52 ; the erection of a new church 
building, 53, 54; a day of fasting 
kept on account of the war between 
the king and parliament, 56 ; its 
custom of obliging the attendance 
at worship of heretics and others 
not desiring to come, 57-60 ; the 
commemorative services held upon 
Its two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary, 91-174 ; decorations of the 
church building upon that occasion, 
91-93 ; list of portraits and pictures 
exhibited at that time, 92, 93 ; the 
change from its Puritan character 
to that of the present day, ill, 112; 
the historical facts of the signing 
of its covenant, 116, et seq ; the 
debt which present generations 
owe to its founders, 129-131 ; the 
reasons for believing in its contin- 
ued life in the future, 136, et seq. ; 
its special relations to the other 
New England colonies and their 
churches, 143, et seq. ; why its cove- 
nant was not accompanied by a 
creed or confession of faith, 146; 
copy of its covenant, 201 ; roll of 
its ministers, 201 ; its former houses 
of worship, 202 ; its communion- 
plate, 202, 203 ; names of the ushers 
on its commemoration day, 204; de- 
scription of the church and chapel 
windows in its present house of 
worship, 208. 
Folsom, Rev. Omar W., letter from, 

185. 
Foote, Arthur, 174. 

Fovvle, , bearer of a petition to 

England, 61. 
Foxcroft, Rev. Thomas, the sermon 
at the close of the first century of 



the First Church preached by, 76, 

78 ; tribute to, 86 
Frothingham, Nathaniel L., D.D., 4, 

202 ; the sermon preached by, on 

the close of the second century of 

the First Church, 69. 
Frothingham, Rev. O. B., letters from, 

188, 194. 
Fuller, Samuel, 116, 118. 

Gage, Miss Annie Louise, 173. 

Gager, , chosen deacon at the 

organization of the First Church, 
14 ; his death, 16. * 

Gannett, Rev. W. C, letter from, 187. 

Gardner, , 24. 

Gorton, Samuel, obliged to attend 
the First Church, and after the ser- 
mon allowed to criticise it, 58, 59. 

. Hale, Edward Everett, D.D., 94. 

Hale, //o7i. Geo. S , xiii-xv. 

Hallam, Henry, quoted, 121. 

Harwood, Henry, 178. 

Hathorne, , 54. 

Hay, Clarence E., 174. 

Hayes, Pres. R. B., letter from, 177. 

Hedge, Frederic H., D.D., 94. 

Hickling, Charles, letter from, 195. 

Hill, Rev. Thomas, letter from, 192. 

Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 143 ; accom- 
panies John Cotton in his flight to 
America, 23 ; is invited to visit 
England in 1643, 55- 

Horton, Rev. Edward A., letter from, 
189. 

Hume, David, quoted, 121. 

Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, introduces 
Antinomianism into the First 
Church, 41 ; her banishment from 
both church and commonwealth, 
and the judgment pronounced upon 
her, 45 ; her death, 47. 

Israel, Rev. ¥., letter from, 184. 

Johnson, Lady Arbella, 117; wife 
of Isaac Johnson, 9; her death and 
burial-place, 16. 

Johnson, Isaac, 117; one of the first 
four signers of the covenant of the 



2l6 



FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 



First Church, 7 ; account of, 9 ; 
family of, in EIngland at present 
day, II ; his death and burial-place, 
16. 

Keaine, Robert, admonished and 
fined for exorbitant charges in 
trade, 52 ; founder and first com- 
mander of the Ancient and Hon- 
orable Artillery Company, 197, 198. 

Key, HdZK W. S., minister of St. Bo- 
tolph's, letters from, 178, 181. 

La Tour, , 58. 

Laud, William, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 21, 22, 28, 55, 119. 

Lewis, , his " History of Lynn " 

cited, 197. 

Lincoln, I\e7: Calvin, letter from, 186. 

Long, Gov. John D., address of, at 
the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary of the First Church, 122. 

Lynne, Henry, whipped for slander 
of the churches and government, 
19. 

Manning, Rev. J. M., letter from, 190. 

Massachusetts, early religious dog- 
matism of, 50, 51 ; unfavorable 
effect of the strife in England be- 
tween the king and parliament 
upon, 56, 57 ; the General Court 
of, was the first missionary society 
in Protestant Christendom, 63 ; 
early beginning of free schools in, 
63 ; the union of Church with 
State in 1630 and at the present 
time, 140. 

Mather, Rn: Cotton, 153, 167. 

Maverick of Winesemett, his services 
among the Indians, 31. 

McKean, , tribute to, 87. 

Milton, John, 121. 

Moodey, Rev. Joshua, tribute to, 85. 

Morison, Rez'. John H., D.D., 173. 

Morton, , 24. 

Mountford, Rev. William, letter from, 
193- 

New England Congregational- 
ism, the occasion and birth of, 60 ; 



the opposition thereto, and the peti- 
tion sent to England, 60, 61 ; the es- 
sence and value of, 128, 129. 
New England, to what she owes the 
elements of her present character, 

74- 
Norton, Rev. John, 64 ; tribute to, 85. 

Nowell, Elder , 14, 16. 

Noyes, Rev. Charles, letter from, 189. 
Noyes, Mrs. Jennie M., 173. 

Osgood, Rez\ E. Q. S., letter from, 

183. 
Oxenbridge, Rev. John, tribute to, 85. 

Paine, Fanny Cabot, window in the 
First Church erected in memory 
of, 209. 

Palmer, Edward, for extortionate 
charges in making Boston stocks, 
is fined and obliged publicly to sit 
in same, 52. 

Peabody, A. P., D.D., 94. 

VQt&rs,Rev. Hugh, 10, 39, 123; ex- 
horts the people against being de- 
ceived by revelations, 50 ; is exe- 
cuted in England at the time of the 
Restoration, 55. 

Plymouth Church, formation of, 169, 
170. 

Porter, Fres. Noah, D.D., address 
of, at the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the First Church, 
142. 

Pray, Lewis G., letter from, 196. 

Prince, Mayor F. C, extract from 
oration of, on the two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of the settle- 
ment of Boston, xviii ; address of, 
at the two hundred and fiftieth an- 
niversary of the First Church, 125. 

Puritan Church, the, its character and 
limitations, 64, 65. 

Puritans, their opinions on matters 
of Church and State, 36-39; ex- 
planation of their intolerance, 81, 
82; peculiarity of their church ser- 
vice called "the opening," 109, 1 10; 
tribute to their noble qualities and 
deeds, 120, 121 ; motives which in- 
spired their emigration to America, 



INDEX. 



217 



T45; their religious spirit, inquiry 
as to whetlier the present genera- 
tion possesses it in like degree, 
163-166. 
Putnam, Rrd. A. P., letter from, 191. 

Rantoul, Hon. Robert S., address 
of, at the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary ofthe First Church, 167. 

Ratcliffe, , 24. 

Ratcliffe, Philip, whipped for slander 
of the churches and government, 
19. 

Renan, Joseph Ernest, quoted, 27. 

Reynolds, Edward, letter from, 195. 

Reynolds, Rez>. Grindall, address of, 
at the two hundred and fiftieth an- 
niversary of the First Church, 151. 

Richardson, Thomas O., xiii. 

Rogers, Airs. Jacob C, xiii. 

Sagamore, John, conversion of, 62. 

Salem Church, formation of, 170. 

Saltonstall, Gurdon, window in the 
First Church erected in memory 
of, 210 

Saltonstall, Sir Richard, 167 ; his 
letter written from England de- 
ploring the intolerance of the Pu- 
ritans, 168. 

Sargent, Turner, 208. 

Second Church in Boston, date of its 
formation, 4; occasion of same, 64. 

Sewall, Rev. Charles C, letter from, 
186. 

Silsbee, Ho7t. Nathaniel, delivers the 
Address of Welcome at the two 
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
the First Church, 94. 

St. Botolph, Church of, 6, 11, 20, 21. 

Staples, Rev. C. A., letter from, 190. 

Stevens, Charles W., Commander of 
Ancient and Honorable Artillery 
Company, letter from, 196. 
Stone, Rev. Samuel, 23. 

Talbye, Dorothy, hung for murder- 
ing her little daughter, 50. 

Thayer, John Eliot, window in the 
First Church erected in memory 
of, 208. 



Thayer, Nathaniel, xiii, xiv, 94. 
Thompson, , appointed as mis- 
sionary to Virginia, 56. 
Thompson, Pichey, 178. 
Thomson, Rev. J.'s., letter from, 1S5. 

Underhill, Captain , 43. 

Unitarian, burning of a, for heresy in 
England, 20. 

Van Brunt, Henry, 93. 

Vane, Sir Henry, 47 ; his fate at the 

time of the Restoration, 55, 56. 
Virginia asks for missionaries of 

Massachusetts, 56. 

Wadsworth, Rev. Benjamin, tribute 
to, 86; selected as President of 
Harvard College, 135; his theo- 
logical opinions, 137, 138. 
Wales, Thomas Beale, window in 
First Church erected in memory 
of, 209. 
Ware, William R., 93. 
Warren, Hon. G. Washington, xi- 
XV ; address of, at the festival in 
Faneuil Hall on the occasion of 
the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versa'y of the settlement of Bos- 
ton, XV. 
Wheelwright, Rev. John, the civil 

strife stirred by, 41, 43. 
Whittier, John G., letter from, 1S8. 
Wilder, Hon. Marshall P., 94. 

Williams, , Bishop of Lincoln, 

5, 22. 
Williams, Roger, 144; his claim to 
have been unanimously chosen 
teacher of the First Church, and his 
reason for declining the office, 17 ; 
protest of the Court against his 
settlement over the Salem church, 
19; he offends the Governor and 
Assistants of Massachusetts, by a 
paper impeaching the validitv of 
their land grant, 34 ; the passages 
especially annoying, 35 ; the rea- 
sons for his banishment in 1635 
from Massachusetts colony, 35, 36; 
his banishment in accordance with 
the character of the constitution of 



2l8 



FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 



the colony, 38; his refusal to hold 
communion as a Christian with 
any one save his own wife, 65. 
Wilson, Rro. John, 33, 42-44, 52, 64, 
92, 121, 122, 132, 202, 204; one 
of the first four signers of the cov- 
enant of the First Church, and its 
first pastor and teacher, 7 ; account 
of, 9-1 1 ; his independence of the 
ritual at the organization of the 
First Church, 14; his departure 
for England, 16, 17; formal instal- 
lation as pastor of the First Church, 
21 ; pronounces judgment upon 
Anne Hutchinson, 45 ; preaches 
the first Artillery-Election sermon 
in 1638, 53, 197, 198; his mission- 
ary work among the Indians, 62 ; 
author of a book upon the Indian 
mission, 62; tributes to, 84, 152- 

154- 

Winslow, Gcni. Edward, 116, 118. 
Winsor, Justin, 94. 



Winthrop, Gov. John, xv-xvii, 11, 
16, 18, 24, 4t, 43, 56, 92, 103, 113, 
114, 117, 121, 122, 143, 198; one of 
the first four signers of the cove- 
nant of the First Church, 4, 7 ; ac- 
count of, 8; his attitude towards 
Antinomianism, 42, 44, 46 ; his 
death, 63 ; reasons for believing 
that he framed the covenant of 
the First Church, 119. 

Winthrop, Margaret, 10. 

Winthrop, Hon. Robert C, 103, «. j 
address of, at the two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of the First 
Church, 113. 

Witchcraft, the persecution of, in 
New England, to what due, 79, 80. 

Woodbury, Kev. A., letter from, 192. 

Wright, Charles, of Boston, England, 
letter from, 180. 

Wright, Thomas, a parishioner of St. 
Botolph's, letters from, 178, 180. 

Wyman, Edward, letter from, 198. 



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